


take me back to you

by citystreetlights (kongniverse)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-06-06 17:26:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6763249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kongniverse/pseuds/citystreetlights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the middle of fighting between dealing with Sehun's transition from an angsty teenager to an adult, trying to write a final thesis and how not to burst into tears at the thought of life after graduation, an awkward crush on his professor's ridiculously attractive TA is the last thing Baekhyun wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> a late fic to celebrate byunbaek's bday!! happy birthday you big meme king,, the love of my life.
> 
> also,,  
> there are other ships and characters in there,  
> i just tagged the main ones!
> 
> i hope you all enjoy reading  
> as much  
> as i enjoyed  
> writing this
> 
> to my friends, archer, zack, eros, aaren, jessica  
> thanks for always reading my stuff  
> and supporting me through my writing slumps,,  
> you're all mvps in my heart

Plain and bitter is the two exact words that perfectly describes Baekhyun's current mood as he sits himself by the window of the coffee shop and eyes every human being that passes by in this dreadful spring morning. His laptop is open in front of him with a brightness setting that can potentially blind him and in his browser: lays open millions of tabs filled with research, research and more stupid research, alongside with an email notification that Baekhyun immediately groans in disgust at as his eyes glance towards the screen. _Revision_. The subject reads bold and capitalized, and he wants nothing more than to just shut his laptop and throw it out in the middle of the busy street.

He takes a sip out of the paper cup in his hand and winces as his tongue is burnt by the hot liquid. He probably should've blown on it a little before drinking and is now he's going to be stuck with a weird tingling on his tongue that will probably last for the next few hours. Resentfully, he hovers his cursor over the email notification and opens the attached document.

Baekhyun is no smartass. He knows his own academic capabilities and he knows that his academic supervisor is the biggest jackass alive as he looks at his thesis draft filled with (harsh) comments and critiques typed in bright red. Some may or may not be necessary. Who gives a fuck about formatting? Obviously not Baekhyun but his supervisor had obviously made a huge deal about the 0.5mm margin that was a little bit off and is “unattractive to look at”—and Baekhyun mentally curses in his head that he doesn’t even see the difference.  

 _Professor Park Jeongsu_ , Baekhyun whines in his head. _Please let me graduate, don’t make my life a living hell like this._

Being in his final year of university means that Baekhyun has less than a year before he is shoved into the real world of adulthood and having set working hours (ew). He had complained to Junmyeon, his senior who graduated a year before him, about how he’s contemplating to throw his laptop out of a window every time his insanely perfectionist academic supervisor gives him a nice grilling over in the comments section of his draft thesis. Junmyeon merely chuckles and gives him the fatherly advice of “kid, you have a storm coming if you think that’s hard”.

Of course Junmyeon would say that. A law school graduate who ranked 4th out of his entire batch and was practically drowning in job offers in his last semester of university, would have a different standard of “difficult” compared to Baekhyun. Baekhyun often wonders if his decision of becoming an English major was a mistake and should’ve followed what his parents wanted him to study and applied for business school but he remembers how much he swore upon himself that he hated the idea of having a desk job. He's grateful for Junmyeon who had encouraged him to go after his dreams back in high school when Baekhyun told the older that he wanted to become an author. 

He quickly skims over the comments left by his professor, taking note on which sections he would need to revise and which parts he would need to delete completely. His heart sinks whenever Professor Park tells him to delete a section entirely because he did not damn well research for hours to have his work deleted just like that. Sometimes he wants to fight Professor Park but the man is a professor with a doctorate degree and  _knows_ what he’s doing and saying when he says Baekhyun is wrong.

“Fucking smartass man,” He mumbles to himself and closes the email tab. He still has another two hour to kill before his class starts, so he starts to look for anything aside from his thesis that he could do. He tries to remember if his best-friend, Jongdae, is available but he recalls the very obvious death threat that the younger had said if Baekhyun even _dared_ to bother him, because Jongdae has finally found his muse to paint and prepare for his final portfolio and the art exhibition after weeks and weeks of art block.

If Baekhyun is being honest, he would rather not work on his thesis right now. No one would. Especially after Professor Park had just delivered the most critical blow on Baekhyun’s ego and he wishes he wasn’t someone who is stressing over trying to fucking graduate. But unfortunately, if Baekhyun wants to graduate on time and receive his degree at the same time as his current fourth year friends, he will need to get his shit together and just write. He made a promise with Jongdae ever since they were wee elementary school students that they would always graduate together and Baekhyun remembers their elementary school graduation picture, their first graduation together, and that their university graduation picture will be the last picture to complete the frame. 

As the stress of final thesis and the thought of graduation hits him, Baekhyun can't help but feel envious towards his juniors. He remembers his own excitement back then and chills run down his spine as the thrill of finally being independent suddenly washes over him. Independent, living alone for the first time, no curfews, no parents and doing everything legally. Now he’s at the bitter age of 22, trying to pretend like he isn’t afraid of what’s about to come next after graduation, whether or not he’ll find a job and be able to pay his rents and bills, or even someone to settle down with and build a family together.

Bitter. Yes, that’s exactly how he feels whenever he remembers the term “settling down”. A term that his mother will never let him live down and pester him with. His brother, who is seven years older than him, had gotten married and now has a son while Baekhyun is changing boyfriend after boyfriend. He remembers quite well how after his brother’s marriage ceremony, his mother had cornered him and asked “who are you dating Baekhyun?” “when are you bringing your boyfriend over?” and the more he’s pressured into dating someone, the more he starts to lose interest in the whole idea of dating overall.

 

> [08:42] **Kim Jongdae** : where are you?

A LINE message notification pops up on his laptop screen. Jongdae. Baekhyun thinks his best-friend has finally left his cave (Jongdae’s art studio) and wants some real human interaction instead of playing around with the creepy faceless human artist model that he has in there. (In all honesty, the wooden figure freaked the hell out of Baekhyun and Jongdae once, as a joke, placed it near Baekhyun’s head while he was sleeping and Baekhyun screamed bloody murder the moment he opened his eyes.)

 

> [08:43] **Byun Baekhyun** : cafe near apartment  
>  [08:43] **Byun Baekhyun** : what are you doing? you finally want human interaction?

It takes a while for Jongdae to reply. The coffee shop manager is already giving Baekhyun the stink eye from how long he’s staying without ordering another cup of coffee but Baekhyun just wants a little something to wake him up for his dreadful morning lecture. Another messages comes through from the background and it was Chanyeol just starting up a ruckus in the group chat so early in the morning. Chanyeol has this habit of messaging everyone ‘good morning’ in the group chat, making sure everyone is awake and not dead in a ditch and prepared for whatever class they have today.

 

> [08:58] **Park Chanyeol** : Good morning! Lets all wake up and not be late for class today!

Chanyeol was too cheery before 9AM and Baekhyun watches the rows of complaints and disses roll into the group chat.

 

> [09:00] **Kim Junmyeon** : morning, chanyeol-ah  
>  [09:00] **Kim Minseok** : how are you this excited on a Tuesday  
>  [09:01] **Lu Han** : go back to sleep, kid  
>  [09:01] **Zhang Yixing** : good morning Chanyeol! :)  
>  [09:02] **Oh Sehun** : shut up hyung 

His seniors are up (and so is Sehun, surprisingly) and probably getting ready to get to work or, in Luhan’s case, back to sleep because he’s all the way in London trying to complete his Masters program and Baekhyun always admires the Chinese man’s dedication when it came to education. Like Junmyeon, Yixing had also graduated the year before and currently interns at a music producer’s company. Minseok, the eldest in their friendship circle, and the one with most sensibility, is an accountant for a somewhat prestigious accounting firm. Baekhyun admires all four of his hyungs because just listening to them talk about their jobs and problems they face after graduating from university already makes him want to pee his pants and crawl back home to his parents.

 

> [09:04] **Kim Jongdae** : i need to eat. starving

Jongdae’s reply finally comes through and Baekhyun switches between the chat window to reply to his best-friend.

 

> [09:05] **Byun Baekhyun** : good. i thought you wouldve eaten your paint pallette or something since you didnt leave the studio for days  
>  [09:07] **Kim Jongdae** : funny. i know you have nothing to do right now so can you bring food by to the studo  
>  [09:07] **Kim Jongdae** : studio*  
>  [09:08] **Byun Baekhyun** : studo  
>  [09:09] **Kim Jongdae** : shut up and be quick before i actually eat my paint pallette 

Baekhyun logs out of the LINE app and closes his Macbook, gathering all of his belongings and packing it all away into his bag. He goes up to the counter and eyes the food on display and decides that Jongdae deserves a nice and hearty meal after all of those hours cooped inside a cold art studio. So he goes for the minestrone and a nice orange poppyseed muffin to accompany and a cup of coffee to go. Baekhyun laughs at the way the barista draws a small smiley face beside Jongdae’s name.

—-

Venturing the cold streets of Seoul has always been a bitch. Baekhyun hates it, he’s pretty sure everyone does as well. Except Chanyeol who’s practically immune to the cold. He regretted not taking the car with him today because he thought that walking would warm his body more but boy was he wrong. His car’s heater and seat warmer would’ve warmed him up more. By the time Baekhyun reaches the Fine Arts department, he worries if the food he bought for Jongdae has gone cold. He dusts off the small pile of snow that piled on his shoulders and head and ventures through the hallways of the department building to find Jongdae’s art studio.

Admittedly, Baekhyun was sort of glad that he and Jongdae shared the same faculty, though both boys were on the opposite ends of faculty grounds. He remembers the first time Jongdae had asked him to come over to the Department of Fine Arts and check out his art studio and Baekhyun kept on heaving and grunting at every flight of stair and down every long hallway till he finally reaches his destination. Now, his even pitiful 22 year old self still heaves and grunts, especially since he’s carrying food in his arms and has no free hand to grip the stair railing. _Shit I need to work out_ , he thinks to himself.

After a few more minutes of struggling and nearly walking into a few more art students, Baekhyun kicks at Jongdae’s art studio door and waits for his friend to open it for him.

“My saviour,” Jongdae smiles as soon as he opens the door to let Baekhyun into the room. The lighting was harsh and bright and Baekhyun wonders how Jongdae’s eyesight isn’t screwed up from spending hours and hours in here. He notices Jongdae’s paint stained hands grabbing at the paper bag in his arms and hands over the food before he gets any paint on Baekhyun’s coat.

“How’s your portfolio going?” Baekhyun shrugs his coat off and folds it into a neat pile on the floor.

“Good. I got the feeling today so I just went for it.” Jongdae answers taking a big spoonful of minestrone into his mouth. “Thanks for the food, by the way. I’ll pay you back later.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Baekhyun scoffs and takes a seat beside Jongdae in front of a big white canvas. “So is this your latest one?” Jongdae nods. “I like the colours.”

Jongdae takes a few seconds to answer Baekhyun’s compliment as he’s trying to swallow the big chunk of meat in his mouth. Baekhyun has always admired Jongdae’s works. Jongdae’s works were either vivid and explosive in colours matched with harsh brush strokes or soft hues with the gentlest strokes and touches but there was always an essence of Jongdae in every piece of artwork he creates. He’s happy that his best-friend is out of the dreadful weeks of art block because seeing Jongdae mope and sulk around the apartment was a pain in the ass for him as he’s also trying to kick his own writer’s block out of his system.

It’s a little chilly in the studio so Baekhyun scoots over a little to try and latch onto Jongdae’s body warmth. Jongdae doesn’t like closing the blinds in his studio. The big glass windows seeped in the cold air from outside and the heater in the studio barely works. Jongdae likes the view he gets from his studio, from here, he can see almost everything that happens on the east side of campus.

“They say, painting is like a silent poetry and poetry is a painting that speaks.” Jongdae says, his lips curving into a smile. “I like to think that colours by itself can tell my story in paintings.”

“Kim Jongdae, are you really using a quote from Plutarch? On me, out of all people?” Baekhyun snorts and playfully smacks Jongdae’s arm which almost made the younger drop his food on the floor. “Also is this how you woo people? Make them think you’re some sophisticated fucker?”

“Fuck, I always forget you’re an English literature student.” Jongdae groans. “You’re researching his philosophical impact on English literature for your final thesis right?”

“Yes and please never use that quote again,” Baekhyun laughs. “Does that even work on anyone?”

“Surprisingly, yes.” Jongdae smirks. “Got me into Junmyeon hyung’s pants rather well.”

“Okay, stop there.”

“But seriously now, how’s your final thesis going? Is your supervisor still being a pain in the ass?” Jongdae drops the serious question for Baekhyun as he unwraps the plastic off the poppyseed muffin. Baekhyun stomach churns as he remembers the revision that his academic supervisor had sent him this morning and wants to cry in Jongdae’s lap. Jongdae knows that anything related to “final thesis” has been a little sensitive with Baekhyun.

Baekhyun’s eyes wanders frantically between Jongdae and the floor and then at Jongdae’s painting in front of them and then back at Jongdae again.

“Good. I mean, I just got revision from Professor Park again this morning on my first chapter draft.” Baekhyun’s head lowers and goes to play with his shoelaces. “You know the usual.”

Jongdae does know the usual. Just like every other time Baekhyun gets revision from his professor. Jongdae is always stuck and never knows what to do because firstly, he can’t relate on having his work being told to be changed entirely in substance or deleted and second, he knows how Baekhyun busts his ass every night to research, research and research until his eyesight worsens and lives on three hours of sleep. “I’m sorry.” is usually the only thing Jongdae can mutter as he wraps his arm around Baekhyun and pulls his best friend into a tight hug.

“It’s fine, Dae.” Baekhyun rests his head on Jongdae’s bony shoulder. “Honestly, once I graduate, I’m going to shove my thesis papers in his face.”

“You go do that.” Jongdae chuckles and so does Baekhyun and the two spend the next hour talking about anything else aside from Baekhyun’s dreadful final thesis and Jongdae’s sex life because Baekhyun is already scarred enough.

—-

Baekhyun comes into class exactly three minutes before it starts, still trying to catch his breath after sprinting from Jongdae’s art studio to the english literature department. Professor Park liked his students to be on time and Baekhyun also wants a small explanation on the revision that his professor had sent him earlier this morning. He takes a seat besides Myungsoo, his one and only friend in Professor Park’s class and the older flashes a (handsome) small smile at Baekhyun before returning back to his phone.

The clock now reads 11.05AM and it was weird for Professor Park to be late since class had started five minutes ago.

“Where’s the Prof?” Baekhyun whispers to Myungsoo who also has an equally confused look plastered on his face.

“Dunno. He usually sends an email if he isn’t coming to class.” Myungsoo answers, peering his gaze at the doorway. Baekhyun replies with a simple ‘oh’ and goes to open his Macbook and thoroughly read the revision that Professor Park had sent him.

“Is that revision?” Myungsoo asks, his tone a little concerned and surprised as he sees the ocean of criticism all over the document. “Who’s your supervisor?”

“Professor Park.” Baekhyun answers while jotting down dot points on what to research more for his revision. “And yes.”

“That’s a lot.” The older replies. “I don’t think mine gives that much.”

“Who’s yours?”

“Professor Kim Ryeowook.” Answers Myungsoo. Baekhyun can’t help but feel a little jealous because Professor Kim is known for being a sweetheart and instead he’s stuck with a perfectionist supervisor who wants his thesis nothing but perfect.

The two talk briefly about their thesis topics, even though Baekhyun really, _really_ hates talking about his thesis because Professor Park is constantly ruining his ego but Myungsoo is also an English Literature student, so if anyone can relate to his problems on researching and writing, it would be him. Baekhyun forgets about class momentarily before he hears rushed footsteps coming down the hallway and he thinks Professor Park must have overslept and just now made his way to class.

Maybe today was Baekhyun’s lucky day or maybe it was also his unlucky day but the man who just walked through the classroom door was definitely not Professor Park. The entire class had gone silent silent, the girls behind him who chattered continuously about beauty products had fallen shocked in awe as a tall and definitely handsome man walked in. So was Baekhyun.

“I’m sorry for the surprise,” The man speaks loudly to the class and places his leather briefcase on the lecturer’s desk. “Professor Park had to suddenly attend private matters out of town and I will be his replacement.”

Great, just as Baekhyun needed his professor the most to save his ass, his final thesis and his damn ego, the man goes out of town and is replaced by this, this sex-on-legs, attractive, Chinese man. Wu Yifan, he said, as he introduces himself to the class.

“I’m Wu Yifan, you can call me Mr. Wu or Yifan is also alright since I graduated from this university two years ago so I’m not really that much older than you guys.” Yifan chuckles at his lame attempt to be funny and Baekhyun rolls his eyes. Myungsoo looks indifferent towards this and opens his own laptop to prepare for the lecture. The girls however, could not stop gawking over Yifan.

Baekhyun honestly can’t even remember having a senior named Yifan. If he graduated two years ago, that means he would be in the same batch as Minseok and Luhan but Minseok and Luhan are both in different faculties so there would be little to no chance of them actually knowing Yifan. Nonetheless, Yifan was a decent lecturer, though occasionally stuttering in between sentences but it was a given since it was his first and sudden day of lecturing. He knew his shit, that’s what Baekhyun likes in lecturers and also his impeccable fluent English and Mandarin just made Baekhyun more and more fond of him. (yes, his phone rang in the middle of class and Baekhyun heard him speak in the corridor).  

In the middle of class, Baekhyun manages to sneak a chance to email Professor Park, asking him about Yifan and consultations regarding his thesis and Professor Park had advised him to go to Yifan since he is his replacement for the next five weeks.

“This guy really knows his stuff,” Myungsoo whispers, eyes still focus on Yifan’s presentation on Plutarch’s “Moralia” references in Montaigne’s “Essays”. Baekhyun also praises the lord because what Yifan is talking right now in class is exactly needed for his research material and the way Yifan is explaining it makes it much easier to understand. 

“Plutarch also had a great influence in other works aside from Essays. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists was also heavily influenced by Moralia—” Yifan continued to speak and Baekhyun found himself being more and more immersed into the lecture and attentatively taking notes, not even bothering to check his phone as he usually does.

By 13.00PM Yifan had ended the lecture and dismisses the class. Myungsoo took his leave and said good bye to Baekhyun as the younger was still busy packing his belongings into his bag. The class emptied slowly till it was only Baekhyun and Yifan left in the classroom and Baekhyun thought maybe this was a good time to bring up what Professor Park had said earlier to him.

“Excuse me, Mr. Wu—Yifan?” Baekhyun approaches the older whose busy packing his belongings into his briefcase and rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt. Baekhyun’s eyes might’ve lingered a little too long on Yifan’s arm before he was startled by Yifan’s reply.

“Yes? Can I help you? Call me Yifan, by the way.” Yifan smiles and honestly, Baekhyun is starting to feel even more nervous and just wants to bolt out of the door.

“Um,” He mumbles, scratching the skin behind his ear. “I’m not sure if Professor Park told you about this, but I’m one of the students that he’s supervising for final thesis matters.”

“Oh!” Yifan gasps. “You must be Byun Baekhyun then?” _Fuck_ , Baekhyun curses in his head.

“Yes, that’s me.” He replies and lowers his head. He feels his fucking cheeks burning and his entire face go red.

“Professor Park told me that I will be here for your consultations. As for revisions, if I can remember, he sent you one early this morning right? So why don’t you submit your revised draft to me and I’ll try to catch up on what you have so far.” Yifan is a sweetheart, Baekhyun wants to just cry on the floor because goddamn, fucking Wu Yifan keeps flashing him that gorgeous smile and ruining his ego even more because now he doesn’t want to disappoint Yifan with his crappy writing skills. “Also, please don’t hesitate to ask me anything that you have difficulty with.”

Baekhyun mutters a small okay and leaves the classroom pocketing Yifan’s email and phone number into the pocket of his jeans. He finally checks his phone and sees the top message from his group chat.

 

> [13.10] **Park Chanyeol** : hey guys, me and kyungsoo are at the courtyard cafe if you guys want to join for lunch!

—-

“Someone go to the arts department and drag Jongdae’s ass here.” Chanyeol groans as he sets down his tray of food onto the table. Kyungsoo flinches as Chanyeol’s elbows nearly smack him in the face because Chanyeol’s big butt tried to fit in between Kyungsoo and Zitao. Lunch was rowdy as always with his usual group of friends. The courtyard cafe is usually where he and his friends meet, being that it’s at the centre of the university grounds meaning an equal distance from each other’s respective faculty.

“Don’t. Jongdae is finally out of his art slump.” Baekhyun speaks, shoving a forkful of jajangmyeon into his mouth. “I brought him food earlier.”

“Seriously?” Chanyeol raises an eyebrow. “I’m glad. Got sick of seeing him mope around the apartment.”

“I hope Jongdae hyung is taking care of himself.” Jongin says in between slurps of his noodles.

“Hey, I hope _you’re_ taking care of yourself, Jonginnie.” Baekhyun barks from his seat at the younger. “I see your dance studio all the way from my department and you have to rest, kiddo.”

“But the art exhibition is soon, hyung. I _have_ to practice. I have the main role.”

“Is Jongdae getting ready for the art exhibition?” Kyungsoo asks. “Is that why he’s all cooped up in that haunted art studio?”

“I’m guessing.” Chanyeol answers. “I mean, all of the art, music and performing arts student have to—Zitao, that was my last piece of meatball!” Zitao snickers as Chanyeol tries to steal a piece of meatball off of Zitao’s plate.

“I wonder what the theatre kids are preparing this year,” Kyungsoo continues to munch on the plastic chopsticks. “I teared up during last year’s performance."

“Woohyun hyung was amazing last year.” Baekhyun says. “I’m sad he’s graduated now.”

“It’s _weird_. First Minseok hyung and Luhan hyung graduated and now Junmyeon hyung and Yixing hyung graduated. Next year, we won’t be here—” Chanyeol sighs, letting his shoulders droop. “Things are moving too fast. I'm not ready.”

“I won’t miss you at all, hyung.” Both Sehun and Zitao unanimously speak up at Chanyeol and the older reaches his arm out to pull at Sehun’s platinum blond locks. Zitao had gotten up quick enough and escaped Chanyeol’s attempt to pinch his cheeks and went to the counter to get a carton of milk. Sehun winces as his senior tugged roughly on his hair.

“Brat.” Chanyeol pouts. “No wonder Jongin is my favourite dongsaeng.” and Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. Baekhyun continues to eat his jajangmyeon uninterrupted and thinks over Chanyeol’s remark about how weird it would be for them to not be at the university daily after graduation. It’s terrifying yet there lies a sense of freedom behind it but also obligations as he’ll have to find a career and work and live the actual adult life. Baekhyun suddenly remembers about Yifan.

“Hey, do any of you know a Wu Yifan?” Baekhyun asks his table of friends. Zitao returns from the counter with a carton of milk that was aggressively snatched by Chanyeol.

“Wu, who?” Kyungsoo asks while gulping down his orange juice.

“Wu Yifan.”

“Oh! I know him!” Zitao exclaims. “He’s Luhan gege’s friend and—Chanyeol hyung, go away! You’re spilling milk everywhere!—where was I?”

“He’s Luhan hyung’s?”

“Right! He is Luhan ge’s friend from his Korean classes. Well, mine too.” Zitao continues. “But I think he was on an exchange to Canada at the start of his third year and only returned back to campus in his fourth year.”

“So he wasn’t here for the entire year when I was in my first year?” Baekhyun asks. “No wonder I don’t know him.”

“Why do you ask, hyung?” Sehun cocks his eyebrow up.

“He’s replacing Professor Park for the next five weeks and he’s my temporary academic supervisor.” He explains and toys around with a leftover piece of soggy vegetable in his bowl.

“He’s really handsome,” Zitao adds. "A lot of girls fawn over him."  
  
“I noticed.”

“Baekhyun, don’t think about hitting on your lecturer.” Chanyeol teases at the older and earns himself a smack from Kyungsoo because he’s moving the table around so much.

“As if.” Baekhyun denies Chanyeol's crude statement, yet he feels the red growing on his cheeks. “Like, yeah, of course he’s attractive and all but I need him to—”

“Fuck you into your mattress?”

“No, asshole, to help me with my final thesis.” Baekhyun wants to murder Chanyeol’s unfiltered mouth. “God, you have no decency, Yeol.”

“Hyung your face is turning red,” Jongin rests the back of his hand on Baekhyun’s cheek. “Are you catching a fever?” Chanyeol bursts into a fit of laughter, earning nasty looks from the other group of students who are gathered at the courtyard cafe and it was safe to say that Baekhyun received a handful of teasing from Chanyeol and he swears he’ll change the lock to their apartment door so Chanyeol will sleep his ass out in the cold corridor.

—-

Later on that night Baekhyun finds himself sitting cross legged on the floor with a whining Sehun in his living room. The younger has pestered Baekhyun into letting him into his apartment because he was lonely and Luhan, Sehun’s boyfriend, was still in class and couldn’t attend to Sehun’s needs and pleas.

“I swear, if Luhan hyung comes back with a sexy British accent, I'll die.” Sehun coos as he scrolls through his messages with Luhan. “Last time we spoke, he sounded more sexy.”

“Okay Sehunnie,” Baekhyun replies, his eyes not daring to leave the laptop screen as he reads through paragraphs and paragraphs of scholarly journals. He’s desperately trying to remember if he’s read this sentence before or not.

“Seriously hyung,” Sehun whines again and rests his chin on top of Baekhyun’s coffee table. “What if he gets more sexy and leaves me for someone else?”

Baekhyun only hums and decides to ignore his junior’s whines and complaining on how hard maintaining a long distance relationship is. Baekhyun wouldn’t know. He’s been single for a good five months now and his last date had ended up horribly wrong that he seriously just wanted to shove aside all thoughts of his critical dating life. (Courtesy of Chanyeol, for setting him up with the most incompatible person alive).

“Hyung,” The younger visibly pouts. “Are you even listening to me?”

“I am,” Baekhyun replies, tucking a strand of his brunet hair behind his ear. “You complain about the same thing ever since Luhan hyung left for London tho—ah shit!” Baekhyun curses as he accidentally closes a tab that he was reading and quickly tries to recover it.

“But what if it’s true, hyung? What if he leaves me for someone better?”

Baekhyun gives up on reading whatever article he was on. The language was hard anyway and he wasn’t in the mood to try and understand complex academic literature on an empty stomach. He pushes the laptop off of his lap and gets up to place it on the coffee table beside Sehun.

“I’m sure he won’t, Sehunnie.” Baekhyun smiles and ruffles Sehun’s hair and for once the younger didn’t bite him for messing up his perfectly styled hair. “When two hearts are meant for each other, no distance is too far, no time too long and no other love can break them apart.”

“You’re so corny, hyung.” Sehun smiles and hides his face in his arms.

Baekhyun chuckles at the younger and makes his way towards the kitchen. “Shut up. Now help me make dinner, Chanyeol and Jongdae will be back soon.”

—-

With the art exhibition just around the corner, Baekhyun finds himself more lonely as most of his friends are intensely preparing for one of the most eventful day of the year. In the mornings and afternoons where he didn’t have class to attend, he’d find himself having the apartment all to himself as Jongdae nowadays only comes back to shower and change into a new set of clothes before dashing back out to the art studio and Chanyeol only returns in the evening after practicing in the music studio.

He finds himself seated by the window of the department’s cafeteria, laptop opened in front of him, mass piles of articles stacked beside and as always, a hot cup of black coffee. Yifan had emailed him a list of articles to check out for reference to his research and Baekhyun had taken the liberty to print it out (and kill an entire forest, a girl had obnoxiously pointed out at him back in the printing place) because he finds it rather difficult to read digitally and he really just liked highlighting shit because it made him seem more academic and intelligent.

Jongdae had commented on Baekhyun’s preferred method of “book researching” rather than online researching and called him a “fucking neanderthal jackass”.

Yifan so far has been nothing but helpful towards Baekhyun, even though Baekhyun is almost always distracted during their consultation sessions because _God_ , Baekhyun wants to personally thank Yifan’s parents and whatever lead the older to become Professor P(oop)ark’s teaching assistant. He quickly types down the summary of the paragraph he just read into a word document before he forgets and that’s when his eyes catches the figure that just walked through the cafeteria doors.

He watches Yifan walk up to the counter and talk to the cafeteria lady. There’s a little jealousy growing at the bottom of his stomach as he watches Yifan flash his gummy smile at the ahjumma who playfully smacks Yifan’s arm. He probably just told some cheesy compliment or joke like he always does. Baekhyun only rolls his eyes and goes back to reading his article before Yifan notices that he’s been staring at him. He watches the wave of LINE notifications that’s coming through his laptop. Chanyeol had just sent the group chat a picture of Sehun’s ass, clad in tight white pants and a noticeable brown smudge on his left side. _Look, Sehun shat himself_ Chanyeol had typed that as a caption accompanying the photo which caused Jongdae and the other hyungs to tease the youngest and Sehun kept on convincing everyone that he accidentally sat on Zitao’s chocolate bar.

Minutes later Chanyeol also uploaded a picture of Zitao’s ugly laughing face into the group chat.

 

> [13:43] **Huang Zitao** : DELETE  
>  [13:45] **Kim Jongdae** : CHANGE IT TO THE GROUP’S PICTURE  
>  [13:45] **Byun Baekhyun** : whats up with your face zitao its living up to luhan hyungs  
>  [13:47] **Lu Han** : I’m glad to know nothing has changed since I graduated

Baekhyun chuckles and proceeds to save the two embarrassing pictures of his juniors for future blackmailing needs. He doesn’t notice Yifan walking towards him until the older calls out his name in that deep, husky voice of his Baekhyun is regretfully attracted to.

“Baekhyun!” Yifan calls out causing the younger to snap his head around so quickly to look at Yifan. He's surprised his neck hasn't sprained. Oh how Yifan's so fashionable today. A nice white turtleneck paired with a cream coat and slim fit black pants that hug his long legs nicely. He should definitely be a model rather than a teaching assistant for English Literature.

“Hi!” Baekhyun squeaks out and he thinks, _what the fuck was that_ , at the sudden inhuman noise he just let out.

“Is this seat taken?” Yifan gestures at the empty seat in front of Baekhyun and Baekhyun shakes his head, motioning for Yifan to sit down. He scoots his belongings a little closer to him, giving table space for Yifan to place his food and drink down. The older says thank you as he takes his seat in front of Baekhyun and slides the coat off of his shoulders.

“I see you’re reading the articles I recommended you,” Yifan says, taking a sip out of his coffee. “Ah, so bitter.”

Baekhyun wants to laugh and comment on how weak Yifan is at taking his coffee.

“Yeah, they’re really helpful. Thanks a lot.” Baekhyun smiles at the older and tucks his hair behind his ear nervously. “I never even thought about discussing Pseudo-Plutarch.”

“Glad to be at help.”

“But the language is kind of hard to understand.” Baekhyun nervously chuckles, now moving to twirl the end of the paper in between his fingers. “If only they wrote these kind of articles in Korean.”

“Don’t we all.” Yifan throws his arms over his head to straighten his back. He groans at the amazing feeling of his back cracking and Baekhyun catches a flash of milky white skin as Yifan’s sweater rode up a little. “I never saw you as the type of guy who likes their coffee black.” Yifan points out.

“Yeah well,” Baekhyun mumbles. “Strongest coffee to keep me awake.”

“You must think I’m a wimp cause I said a cappuccino was bitter yet you’re taking it black with no sugar and no milk.” The older chuckles, turning his face to the side to look out the window and Baekhyun admires Yifan’s side profile that was bathed under the gentle afternoon ray. Breathtakingly beautiful— just like the way he feels when he sees one of Jongdae’s finished artwork. If he could paint, he’d paint this moment forever. This, _this_ is what a date with Wu Yifan feels like—and he feels himself shrink to the size of a pea and cheeks growing red at the thought. Maybe this is a good opportunity to ask if he’s going to the art exhibition or not.

“Yifan... _hyung_.” Baekhyun calls out and the older who was engrossed in watching two students snowball fighting outside turns his head and focuses back on Baekhyun. 

“Yes, what is it?”

“I—don’t think you’re a wimp cause you said cappuccino was bitter.” He chickens out and he only feels his face heat up even more. “I just, didn’t even see you as someone who even drinks coffee.”

“In all honesty,” Yifan leans forward onto his elbows, eyebrows scrunching up in a serious thinking expression. “I prefer alcohol better.”

Baekhyun rolls his eyes. “Who doesn’t?”

“Is there a thing where you mix coffee with alcohol? Is that socially and morally acceptable?”

“There is.” Baekhyun sighs. “It’s called Irish coffee but, I doubt you’d want to drink that before a lecture, Yifan hyung.”

“If I come to lecture and I’m drunk it’s totally your fault, Byun Baekhyun.” The older teases and quickly downs his cup of coffee and checks the time on his watch. “Oh, I have to go. 3PM lecture.” Yifan gets out of his seat and puts on his coat, doing last minute checks and making sure he doesn’t leave anything behind. Baekhyun watches Yifan’s fingers thread through his blond hair, pushing it back and fuck, he looks ethereal.

“Tell me about your progress okay? I look forward to your revised first chapter.” Yifan waves goodbye and dashes out of the cafeteria before Baekhyun has the chance to say goodbye. The last of his concentration had dissolved the moment Yifan had taken the seat in front of him so he called it a day and packed up and followed suit, leaving the cafeteria and makes his way to the parking lot.

—-

“Baekhyun hyung,” A voice and the sudden vice grip on his arm snaps Baekhyun out of his daydream. “You almost rammed the cart right into that woman.” Sehun scolds while he ducks his head, apologizing to the old woman that Baekhyun nearly rear ended.

“Sorry, I was thinking of what to get next.” Baekhyun apologizes and picks up his speed.

“You seem so distracted today—ah, get that cereal for me.”

“Are you sure you want this?” Sehun lets out a persistent nod and Baekhyun throws the box into the pile of groceries in their cart. Despite being 20 years old and a whole head taller than Baekhyun, Sehun is sometimes like an excited small puppy. Sometimes it was still a little hard for Baekhyun to believe that Sehun is a legal adult and, regretfully, a super sexy and handsome one though externally, he looked like he’s had his emotions ripped out of his ass.

“Hyung,” Sehun whines and interrupts Baekhyun who was busy going through the groceries list. “Can you go and get me the flea ointment from the next aisle? I’m too embarrassed to.”

“What? Flea ointment?” Baekhyun asked in confusion. Sehun’s face had gone beet red and hastily clamped his hand over Baekhyun’s face so the older wouldn’t mutter one more word.

“Be quiet! People are going to hear hyung!” He hisses, burying his face into Baekhyun’s shoulder to hide embarrassment. “You heard me loud and clear.”

“Why do you even need flea ointment?” Baekhyun smirks, purposely raising the volume in his voice to tease the younger and watch as Sehun squirms trying to clamp his hand over Baekhyun’s mouth. “See, this is why you shower daily, Sehun-ah.”

“No, fuck—it’s all stupid Jongin’s fault—hyung _please_ get it for me cause what if some girls from university see me?”

“Sehun you’re gay—”

“So? Doesn’t mean I can’t be popular with the ladies. Now please, hyung, get it for me before we— _I_ start a scene in the cereal aisle.”

“Fine. Brat. You owe me.” Baekhyun pockets the grocery list and storms off to the next aisle. Sehun yelled out a loud “I love you hyung!” as Baekhyun makes a turn to general medicine aisle.

“They all look the fucking same,” Baekhyun curses underneath his breath as he squints his eyes to get a better read at the different ointment packages. Sehun didn’t even mention which brand of ointment he needed or what it even looked like at least so now he’s stuck there like a deer caught in headlights. He’s pretty sure all of these ointments work the same, regardless of the brand or packaging or whatever. Baekhyun doesn’t understand why Sehun doesn’t just ask the store employees if he wants to save face and dignity so much.

“Excuse me—” He calls out at one of the employees who was busy restocking the shelf before his words die in his mouth as he saw Yifan turn the around the corner, shopping basket in hand and happily chattering away on the phone. Out of all places, this has got to be the worst place to have run into the one lecturer Baekhyun has an awkward semi-crush on.

Baekhyun tries to fight the urge to bolt back to where Sehun is because one, he’s deemed himself “not presentable” (or in Sehun’s hip simple lingo: Messy) to meet Yifan who constantly looks like a runway model and two, he’s holding numerous packages of flea bite ointments and Yifan is and will think he’s the one with flea bites instead of his dumbass dongsaeng who was too scared to get it by himself.

However Baekhyun likes to think that he’s a mature adult (by law, he is) and sees that this is probably not even a big deal. Everyone has their own little emergency problems that they need to deal with and at least it’s not laxatives to cure a week long constipation. So he decides to remain cool, which, of course, backfires on him completely as he couldn’t control his arms and knocked over the entire content on the shelves onto the store and his little yelp, the store employee’s death glare, and Yifan hanging up his phone call meaning that he heard everything, didn’t exactly help ease the situation on Baekhyun’s already unstable emotional state.

“I’m so sorry,” Baekhyun whispers as he kneels to the floor helps the store employee clean up Baekhyun’s mess. His cheeks are burning and he’s pretty sure he’s about as red as the colour of the employee’s uniform. The employee chuckles before muttering “it’s okay” and diligently gets back to reshelving the packages. Baekhyun only prays that Yifan didn’t see him or else he’s ready to do a 100M dash back to his car in the parking lot.

Thankfully, Yifan was too busy looking at different shampoos for him to notice that Baekhyun literally took down nearly half of the shelf onto the floor. He prays to an unknown god out there and says his thanks on saving his ass from making a fool out of himself in front of Yifan.

Or so he thought.

“Baekhyun?” Yifan readjusts the glasses that’s perching low on the bridge of his nose to get a better look at the younger. _God, he’s so cute._ Baekhyun groans and wants to die internally. Yifan’s making his way over towards Baekhyun and Baekhyun is completely frozen in place as he watches the older close in. He quickly hides the ointment in his hands behind his back and presses himself against the shelf. The employee lets out an audible gasp as Baekhyun backs into the shelf, worried if the contents will fall onto the floor again.

Baekhyun never thought about how uncool and lame he truly is.

“Hi!” He squeaks again, feeling his neck constrict as if the wrap of his scarf had been too tight.

“Why do you look so pale? Are you sick?” The older asks as he stops in front of Baekhyun and leans down a little to examine the younger’s face. “You’re not overworking yourself on that final thesis aren’t you?”

“N-no,” Baekhyun squeaked for the third time in the last ten minutes. _What the fuck, Baekhyun._ He cursed to himself and tried to avoid any eye contact with Yifan. “I’m okay,”

“Hey, stay still for a minute,” Yifan says while taking a step forward towards Baekhyun. Baekhyun didn’t think it was possible to back-up even more into the shelf without causing a denture in the metal behind him. Yifan reaches his hand out and his long fingers thread to the side of Baekhyun’s head, combing through the brunet locks and tickling his ear.  Baekhyun’s heart is on the verge of jumping out of his chest right now. _Is he going to kiss me? What do I do? Oh god. Should I close my eyes?_

“Why do you look so scared?” Yifan finally speaks up again after several seconds of silence, eyebrows cocked up in confusion. Baekhyun finally has the courage to open his eyes and he sees the yellow price sticker stuck on Yifan’s fingertips. “The price sticker must’ve stuck gotten stuck to your hair when you backed into the shelf.” He watches Yifan roll the sticker into a tiny ball and tosses it into his shopping basket.

“Oh,” Baekhyun mutters, finally feeling like he’s able to breathe and move. “Thanks, Yifan hyung.”

“No problem,” The older smiles and dusts his fingers on his coat. “Didn’t expect to run into you here though.”

“Yeah, my apartment is close by and I’m out shopping for monthly groceries with a friend,” Shit. _Sehun_. The brat is probably pouting and waiting for him.

“I see,” Yifan wonders. And before Yifan could say another word to Baekhyun, Sehun yelled out, like the indecent brat he is and saves Baekhyun’s ass from humiliating himself.

“Baekhyun hyung!” Sehun shouts from the end of the aisle with a visible pout and is clearly munching on a grape that he had picked off the shelf. “What’s taking you so long to just get flea ointment?”

 _Oh my god, Sehun_. Baekhyun grips the tube in his hands so hard that he’s not even surprised if half of the contents in it squirts onto the floor but the fact that Sehun had just yelled out down to the entire aisle (or even the entire fucking supermarket) that he was there to get flea bites ointment, which, if traced back to the original story, was meant for Sehun and Yifan heard as clear as day and raised his eyebrows before softly asking Baekhyun “flea ointment?” with a worried look plastered all over his face made him want to dig a hole and bury himself in it.

“I have to go!” Baekhyun mutters nervously and he struggles to move alongside the shelves, praying to hide the flea ointment behind his back out of Yifan’s sight. “It was nice seeing you! I’ll email you about my revision soon!” He says one last time in a very, very weird high pitch voice, before he quickens his pace and Yifan can only stand still and awkwardly wave goodbye as he watches Baekhyun rejoin his friend, smacking him on the back which made his friend let out an audible yelp.

“ _Bitch_! What was that for?” Sehun curses, one hand pushing the cart and the other caressing the sharp pain on his back from where Baekhyun had slapped him hard.

“Watch your mouth, brat.” Baekhyun hisses, ducking his head to hide under his scarf. Baekhyun just wants to go to the check out right now and leave and not return again for at least a year. There were plenty of other supermarkets anyway.

“Who was that? Hyung, your face is so red—” Baekhyun lands another hard slap on Sehun’s back.

“Just, let’s get out of here before you fucking embarrass me even more.”

“But there’s a sale on galbi, hyung. I promised Chanyeol hyung to pick that up for him—” Sehun whines while having his arm tugged away by Baekhyun.

“Galbi is the least of my problems right now, Sehun-ah.” Baekhyun scolds, his face is still burning red and ignoring all of Sehun’s protests about how Chanyeol will be mad at him if Sehun didn’t get the galbi because Sehun had promised (Sehun had eaten Chanyeol’s last piece of galbi last time and he felt apologetic) so Baekhyun gave in, telling him to quickly run to the meat section and go grab it while he stands at the checkout line because all he’s thinking about is getting the fuck out of that supermarket and crawl underneath his blankets in bed.

—-

“I heard from Sehun you nearly died in the pharmacy aisle,” Chanyeol teases as he helps Baekhyun bring the groceries into their kitchen. Jongdae was setting at the dining table with his sketchbook and and laptop open in front of him, ignoring his two roommates chattering about in the kitchen and pays no mind to help unpacking the groceries but Baekhyun knows Jongdae is hard to budge when he’s concentrated.

“That brat,” Baekhyun hisses as he stands on his tiptoes to try and store the cereal on the top shelf. “Yeol, help.”

“So you ran into that hot TA of yours while buying flea ointment?” The younger asks and Baekhyun rolls his eyes because Sehun must’ve been messaging with Chanyeol when they were in the car and if Baekhyun had known earlier, he would’ve dropped Sehun off in the middle of the highway.

“Why were you buying flea ointment?” Jongdae perks up from the dining table. “I told you to change your bedsheets every two weeks.”

“For _your_ information, it was for Sehun because he was too embarrassed to go and get it by himself.” Baekhyun defended himself. Chanyeol lets out an excited gasp as he raids through one of the grocery bags and finds his promised galbi and hugs it tightly against his chest.

“And your TA caught you while you were buying it?” Jongdae raises his eyebrows, attention now focused fully on Baekhyun. “Since when were you this awkward, Byun Baekhyun?”

“Yeah, don’t you usually come on to guys you’re sexually interested in rather boldly?” Chanyeol winks at him and lands a playful smack on Baekhyun’s ass.

“Hey, that incident with you, was years ago and I was drunk off my ass. I would’ve grinded up on Sehun if I was that drunk.”

“Yeah but you would’ve probably ended up behind bars because he was what? 17 at that time?”

“Okay, enough, I don’t want to hear about that right now.” Jongdae interrupts, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. “You’re both so fucking nasty.”

“Like you and Junmyeon hyung aren’t nasty, Jongdae, don’t talk like you’re the purest.” Chanyeol laughs and a slipper smacks the back of Baekhyun’s head as the taller male ducks and uses Baekhyun as a shield from Jongdae’s flying house slipper.

Baekhyun smacks the side of Chanyeol’s head with the slipper for using him as an impromptu shield because Chanyeol is being more of a hindrance than helpful right now and he’s scared that he will knock over the eggs he just bought onto the floor. But Baekhyun does miss this. It had been a while since the three of them were spending the night at the apartment. Usually it was just Baekhyun alone in the big three bedroom apartment but now it’s lively and his stomach sinks in thinking that this is their final year of university and who knows how many more nights can he spend like this.

“Have you guys eaten dinner, by the way?” Baekhyun asks after he’s stopped smacking Chanyeol with the house slippers. “We haven’t eaten dinner together as a three in such a long time.”

“I had a late lunch today but I don’t mind,” Jongdae replies. Chanyeol shakes and immediately offers to cook because Baekhyun had finally gotten off his ass and did the groceries so Chanyeol wanted to get creative and cook a nice dinner for the three of them (and also his galbi). Jongdae also offers to help, rolling the sleeves of his sweater up and Chanyeol automatically finds himself ordering everyone around, Jongdae diligently chopping up vegetables and Baekhyun cook the rice.

It wasn’t until ten minutes in that Chanyeol finds Baekhyun and Jongdae quarreling over the size of the cuts of the carrots and Chanyeol kicks Baekhyun out of the kitchen before a brawl starts and tells the older to set up the table instead.


	2. Chapter 2

Baekhyun has approximately had his ass glued to the dining chair since 10PM last night till dawn when Jongdae was woken up by Baekhyun’s yelp and loud banging of his leg against the table. The younger darted out of his bedroom so quick that Baekhyun swore the door was about to rip off from its hinges and break into two.

“What was that?” Jongdae, in his mighty Star Wars themed flannel pajama pants and stained black sweatshirt threatens from the doorway of his room, stance ready to fight while holding a paint palette knife to defend his safety.

“Relax,” Baekhyun winces as he crouches onto the floor to soothe the pulsing pain on his shin with his hand. “I banged my leg on the table.”

“Oh,” Jongdae mutters and let’s down the palette knife. “I thought there was a burglar.” The younger scratches the back of his head and yawns. Chanyeol joins in a second too late, also almost roughly ripping the door off of its hinges and alike with Jongdae, Chanyeol is ready and armed with his guitar. Any burglar would fall unconscious if Chanyeol had _really_ smacked them with it.

“Easy there, cowboy.” Jongdae sniggers.

“I heard a noise,” Chanyeol panics, his head frantically turning left and right to check down the hallway to the front door and then back to the sliding glass door in the living room that leads to the balcony. “And someone yelped.” Baekhyun can only roll his eyes and grab onto the edge of the table to pull himself back up. “Also, why were you on the floor Baekhyun? You’ll catch a cold.”

“Dumbass,” Baekhyun groans. “I banged my leg on the table and I yelped. Sorry I woke you guys up—and Chanyeol, please—for the sake of our eyes here, put on some pants. It’s early spring you psycho.”

Chanyeol quickly looks down to scan his lower part of his body and realizes that he had just burst out of his bedroom still clad in only white tighty-whities. His pajama pants must have shimmied off of his legs during his tossing and turning in bed and he had turned up the heater a little hotter than usual tonight. Lest if it had been a burglar, Chanyeol would’ve been fighting while half naked.

“The burglar would’ve died from seeing the size of your bulge, Park.” Jongdae comments again and Chanyeol curses both Jongdae and Baekhyun’s name under his breath and quickly retreats back into his bedroom and slams his door. Baekhyun prays that the door won’t fall off because he doesn’t want to pay the extra repairing fees.

The clock reads 4:37AM and judging by the silence from Chanyeol’s room, Baekhyun’s guessing that the younger has gone back to dreamland. Baekhyun yawns and scratches his stomach, looking back at his opened laptop and at the word document he’s been working on for hours.

“Have you slept?” Jongdae asks yawning right after Baekhyun. Baekhyun shakes his head and takes his seat back on the dining chair and wraps himself in the blanket draped over the back of the chair. Jongdae can see that Baekhyun is emotionally exhausted and he sees the half empty jug of the coffee maker on the table that Baekhyun has been trying to keep himself awake by numerous of cups of strong black coffee.

“Baek,” He mutters again, moving to stand beside Baekhyun. The older whimpers and rests his head on the flat of Jongdae’s stomach and Jongdae melts, threading his fingers through his best-friend’s hair and letting the older use him as a temporary pillow to rest on. It’s a little damp, probably from the sweat produced from being wrapped in a cocoon of blanket for hours like a personal sauna. Jongdae watches Baekhyun’s eyelids flutter to stay awake and he sees the black rimmed glasses slowly slide down the bridge of his nose. “Don’t drive yourself into a wall.”

“I’m so tired,” Baekhyun protests in defeat, pushing his laptop away from him. “I hate this fucking final thesis. I want to cry.”

“You should get some sleep. For now, at least.” Jongdae suggests, pulling Baekhyun away from his stomach. Baekhyun looks up at Jongdae with sleepy eyes and Jongdae wants to squeal at how adorable his usually annoying best-friend looked.

“I can’t,” Baekhyun whimpers again. “I drank so much coffee enough to stay awake till next week.” Baekhyun looks like a kicked puppy and Jongdae wouldn’t dare leave him alone in the living room when he’s like this.

“Come and sleep in my room with me.” Jongdae suggests and Baekhyun shoots a concerned look up at his friend, eyebrows raised so high it might fall off his face.

“You realize we aren’t young small boys any more, right?”

“Come on,” Jongdae sniggers and tugs at Baekhyun’s arm. “It’ll be just like elementary school. For old times sake. We haven’t slept together in such a long time.”

“That sounded wrong,”

“You know what I mean,” The younger huffs. “Now shut that laptop down and if you don’t come in with me in the next five minutes, I’m locking you out.”

Baekhyun can only chuckle back and follow suit, remembering to save his word document (so he won’t burst into tears if he loses it) and shuts down his laptop before following Jongdae into his bedroom. Within the next thirty minutes, Jongdae and Baekhyun have managed to quarrel over how one was hogging the entire blanket and Baekhyun’s childish ass took all the pillows as hostage as revenge for Jongdae putting his cold feet on Baekhyun’s bare back and making him yelp and bang his head onto the wall. Baekhyun falls asleep with his leg over draped over Jongdae’s stomach and Jongdae smacks Baekhyun’s limbs away at every chance he gets.

It wasn’t until 8.15AM when Chanyeol wakes up to an eerily silent apartment and tiptoes into Jongdae’s room, seeing the two cuddled asleep on Jongdae’s bed like newborn puppies. He takes one closed up picture of Jongdae’s sleeping face and one of Baekhyun’s and one of the two sleeping like lovers before posting it into the group chat. A certain death from Baekhyun is waiting for Chanyeol as he dives onto the bed and promptly lands his large body on the two sleeping boys.

—-

[08:17] Park Chanyeol sent an image.  
[08:17] Park Chanyeol: junmyeon hyung! jongdae is cheating on you! :o  
[08:20] Kim Junmyeon: oh no!!  
[08:21] Do Kyungsoo: never thought id see the day i call these two cute  
[08:22] Huang Zitao: omfg im howling  
[08:25] Oh Sehun: baekhyun hyung is so ugly

—-

Sehun comes over later on that morning with the news that Luhan is visiting Korea just in time for the art exhibition, three whole chickens with a side of kimchi, and Jongin and Zitao in tow behind him.

“Hyung, he wouldn’t shut up about it over LINE.” Zitao complains in between taking bites of his chicken. Baekhyun has a headache from the lack of sleep and Jongin just smacked Sehun’s chopsticks away from being too greedy.

“Be quiet, Zitao. You’re just jealous cause you’re bitter and single.” Sehun snaps back at his friend, pointing the chopsticks lethally at the Chinese boy.

“But isn’t that great Sehun-ah? You finally get to see Luhan hyung again so I won’t have to listen to you whine here in my apartment.” Baekhyun chuckles and sees the small tinge of red blooming high on the younger’s cheeks as he ducks his head down a little to hide the growing cheeky smile on his face.

“God, you’re so grossly in love like a middle school girl.” Jongin smacks Sehun’s arm and Sehun tries to shove Jongin back off of his chair and Baekhyun stops the two before anyone physically hurts themselves in Baekhyun’s apartment. Zitao mutters a “you’re so annoying” in Chinese before Sehun glares at him and yells out “say that again in Korean” and Zitao does. Loud and clear.

An email from Yifan comes through to Baekhyun while he was busy trying to get the youngins to stop before a blood bath arises in his dining room and Jongdae would be pissed if he comes home to blood stains on their furniture.

—-

“Hey,” Yifan greets with a smile when he turns around in his office chair at Baekhyun who’s standing in the middle of the doorway, ready for his thesis consultation session. Baekhyun sort of regrets he didn’t try to look more presentable for this, after looking at how Yifan is perfectly dressed with a crisp white dress shirt and a slim fit grey trousers. He sets down the paper in his hand on his desk and gestures for Baekhyun to take a seat in front of him.

“Hi,” He greets back and makes his way to the chair opposite of Yifan’s desk and sets down all of his belongings on the surface. “I’m sorry for making you wait.”

“Don’t be, you’re actually right on time.” The older smiles oh so sweetly and Baekhyun sort of wants to melt into a puddle on to the floor. “Now let’s get straight into your thesis, okay?” and Baekhyun nods, opening his laptop and starting to discuss his progress to Yifan.

Baekhyun likes Yifan. He was a great lecturer, he’s very helpful and tries to be helpful for Baekhyun and his thesis and unlike Professor Park, Baekhyun doesn’t feel insecure on expressing his opinion on a certain matter on his thesis subject to Yifan. He doesn’t judge or shoot Baekhyun down if his opinion was wrong, he would say it’s an interesting point of view that Yifan himself has never thought about and that made Baekhyun feel better about himself.

Baekhyun also likes Yifan in a way that he can’t stop thinking about how great Yifan’s lips would feel against his or how perfect the small of his hands would fit with Yifan’s own large hands. And he’s distracted, yet again, watching Yifan whose diligently explaining Baekhyun which parts he needs to work on and what materials and journals he needs to look up more on in order to improve the quality of his thesis. A small curl of Yifan’s blonde hair falls out of his neatly styled do and lands on his forehead and Baekhyun just wants to push it back in place and see how nice Yifan’s hair would feel running between his fingers.

He’s quickly snapped out of his daydream when Yifan’s phone rings and Yifan excuses himself to answer the call.

“I’ll be quick,” The older had assured Baekhyun and promptly left the room. Baekhyun only hears a small chunk of Chinese being spoken when Yifan closes the door behind him. He takes this as an opportunity to see what Yifan has been scribbling on the piece of paper in front of him while he was too busy zoning out and thinking of 101 types of dates he can go on with Yifan. Baekhyun chuckles a little as he reads Yifan’s handwriting. A little messy and all over the place but maybe if no one told him it was Korean, Baekhyun would’ve thought it was neat.

The clock reads 6:15PM. He’s thinking about how it’s already pretty dark outside despite it being early Spring and he wishes he didn’t walk to campus earlier. When he left the apartment, it was still bright out and the weather was perfect for walking but now, he thinks he’s going to freeze over. He’s been at his session with Yifan for more than an hour now and he hates himself from having to have zoned out on the older man like that but god, he’s _so_ distracted whenever he comes into a 50M radius of Yifan.

“Sorry, my mother called,” Yifan returns to the room after another five minutes. “You know how they get.”

“Yeah, I do.” Baekhyun agrees, his own mother nags at him still even though he doesn’t live at home anymore and is a grown adult. “My mum does the same.”

“No matter how old we are, we’ll still be little boys in their eyes huh?” Yifan laughs and takes his seat across of Baekhyun. “Honestly, I’m turning 25 this November and she still treats me like I’m her 7 year old son.” Oh so Yifan is born in November.

“You don’t look like someone turning 25,” Baekhyun jokes. He’s surprised that no weird dying animal sounds came out of his mouth when he tried to reply to Yifan

“True, I look like someone who’s turning 30,” The older laughs and leans back into his chair to get comfortable. “Be honest with me, Baekhyun.”

“Not 30, more like, 27 or 28.” Baekhyun answers truthfully. “You’d be called lăorén then.”

“You speak Chinese?” Yifan asks, surprised Baekhyun knows the term in his mother tongue.

“No, but I have friends who are Chinese and so I hear it from time to time when they’re bickering,” He answers and Yifan gives a small ‘oh’ and turns his head to see the clock on the wall.

“How about you, Baekhyun?” The older asks again. “How old are you turning?”

Baekhyun is taken aback a little because he never thought Yifan would be interested in knowing anything about his life. “23 in May.”

“That’s so soon,” Yifan coos, folding his arms on the table and leaning a little forward. “What date? If I may ask.”

“Uh, the sixth.” Baekhyun answers shyly. “It’s no big deal.”

“Nonsense,” Yifan interrupts. “Your birthday is your most special day of the year.” His hand quickly moves to type on his phone and Baekhyun turns a little anxious as to what Yifan might be typing down but the older quickly turns his phone screen at the younger, only to reveal Baekhyun’s birthday date written down on Yifan’s calendar, complete with excessive amounts of emojis that Baekhyun would usually cringe at but is endearing coming from Yifan.

“Now your birthday is forever written on my phone.” Yifan smiles again. “Unless, well, I lose my phone. But let’s not hope for that!”

“What about you, hyung? What date is your birthday?” Baekhyun at least tries to ask the same, amazed that he’s currently having a non-thesis related conversation with Yifan for the first time.

“Sixth as well,” The older answers simply. “See, we share the same date.”

“You’re still years older though, hyung.” Baekhyun jokes and Yifan also laughs, calling him a cheeky brat. He sends Baekhyun off at 6.30PM, worrying that it’ll get too late and Yifan said he’s gone through everything he wanted to discuss with Baekhyun on his thesis for now. Baekhyun takes his leave and walks down the corridors with steps as light as a feather and his heart threatening to jump out of his chest at any time. He takes out his phone and ignores the notifications from his group chat. Chanyeol is probably finally getting Jongdae’s wrath because of the sleeping picture but Baekhyun is too happy to care as he opens his calendar to November 6th and writes “ _Yifan hyung’s 25th Birthday_.”

—-

But to say that today was a perfect day would clearly be an understatement made by Byun Baekhyun himself as halfway through the walk across the campus’ courtyard, Baekhyun realizes he’s missing his USB drive. His USB drive that contains all of his research materials and notes for his classes that potentially holds his fate on whether or not he fucking graduates from this hell hole univeristy. Baekhyun doesn’t care about the odd looks he’s getting from the other university students who walk by him as he’s in the middle of a meltdown near the fountain.

He’s gone through his bag at least four times, taking everything out of it and laying it down on the stone pavement and almost ripping his bag open to check.

He’s doomed. He’s so _fucked_. He’s on the verge of bursting out crying (he has shed two tears approximately) because jesus fucking christ, that USB has everything he needs to graduate. Baekhyun just doesn’t care anymore, his head is clouded, trying to think of every possible place he last saw his USB but no memory is coming back to him. He tries to think if Sehun had borrowed it when he came over this morning or if Jongdae has taken it as a joke but he remembers seeing it when he was back in Yifan’s office during his consultation session but he was so sure of packing it into his bag. Unless it has fallen somewhere along his walk back. And so Baekhyun cries, finally, at how far away his department is to where he’s standing now and crouches on the ground in sorrow in memory of his now lost USB drive.

“Baekhyun?” _Oh god, this voice._

“Baekhyun, are you alright?” The voice calls out for him again and he doesn’t want to stand up and look up at Yifan with his ugly crying face post-mental breakdown near the university’s fountain.

“Hyung, don’t come near me.” Baekhyun sobs, hiding his face in his arms and scarf. God he looks so ugly right now, all snot-nosed and face probably glowing from the tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Are you crying? Baekhyun?” Yifan genuinely sounds worried and he rushes over towards the younger and crouches down to meet Baekhyun at eye-level, not caring if his trousers track dirt from the pavement. “Are you sick? Are you hurt anywhere?”

“No, I’m not crying.” He chokes out again, trying to regain his composure and brave up to show his face at the older. “I lost my USB that has all of my research in it.” His face says otherwise on the ‘not crying’ part and Yifan is momentarily lost for words till he gasps and shoves a hand into one of his pockets in a rush.

“I think this is the USB you meant? I found it at the door of my office.” Yifan holds out a white USB in his hand that has scribbles of silly drawings on it that Baekhyun remembers drawing on with one of Jongdae’s sharpies. Baekhyun felt his legs go weak at a sudden realization, because 1) he just had a public breakdown near the university’s fountain, possibly tanking his reputation down a little and 2) Wu Yifan, his TA who is also his dream man crush has seen him crying while crouching on the ground like a child.

“Will you stop crying now that you’ve found your USB?” Yifan looks into the younger’s eyes with worry. “I thought you were sick.”

Baekhyun takes the USB in Yifan’s hand and nods, wiping his tears away with the back of his hands and sniffs. Yifan takes out his handkerchief and gives it to Baekhyun and tells him to stand up while he collects Baekhyun’s belongings off the ground. Baekhyun is dumbfounded at how nice Yifan is towards him, after finding him a mess in public and tries to help Baekhyun dry his tears up. Yifan offers to take Baekhyun home after finding out the younger had walked to campus. Baekhyun tried to say no but Yifan was persistent and didn’t want him to catch a cold since the weather is still transitioning from winter to spring.

The drive to Baekhyun’s apartment was cosy. That’s how Baekhyun would describe it. No awkward silences as Yifan tried his best to keep the conversation alive and Baekhyun finds himself forgetting about the previous mental breakdown he had earlier as he’s swept away by Yifan’s horribly funny dad-level jokes and bad puns.

When Yifan pulls up by the pavement in front of Baekhyun’s apartment, he offers to walk Baekhyun to the door but Baekhyun says no, thankful enough that Yifan has already driven him back to his apartment even though Yifan lives in the opposite direction.

“Don’t scare me again like that okay?” Yifan says to Baekhyun while smiling and giving the younger’s hair a ruffle. Baekhyun smiles back and nods.

“Have a safe drive, hyung. Thanks for taking me home.” Baekhyun bids his goodbye to Yifan and the older waves goodbye as he drives away in his car and Baekhyun quickly enters his apartment building to avoid being exposed even more to the cold night’s air.

Somewhere between the drive back through the bright streets of Seoul and the old 80s music that was turned down low behind their conversation, Baekhyun falls a little harder.

—-

Baekhyun sing songs as he enters through the apartment and Jongdae smiles from the kitchen.

“Had a good night?” Jongdae asks, not taking his eye off from the wok in front of him. “I’m making stif fry beef for dinner.”

“Guess who drove me home, Jongdae.” Baekhyun rests his chin on Jongdae’s shoulders, catching a whiff of the dish his best-friend is cooking. His chin digs a little into Jongdae’s flesh but Jongdae is used to it, letting the older cling to him like an excited puppy. Baekhyun looks positively head over heels but Jongdae keeps it to himself because from previous experiences, Baekhyun will just flat out deny it.

“Hm, I wonder who,” Jongdae teases knowingly. He sees everything that happens in the street in front of their apartment from his bedroom and Jongdae saw the tall blonde man who endearingly ruffled Baekhyun’s hair before he bid farewell and drove off in his black sedan. He had been on the phone to his boyfriend, Junmyeon, when he leaned onto the window and caught the exact moment the car pulled up. “Go set the table will you?” He orders, nudging his elbow into Baekhyun’s stomach to pry the older off him.

“Is Chanyeol coming home for dinner?” Baekhyun asks finally letting go of Jongdae and unwraps his scarf from his neck and tossing it onto the kitchen counter.

“No,” The younger replies. “He said he’s going out with friends from his department.”

“Yes!” Baekhyun shouts. “More beef for me.”

“You can invite Sehun over for dinner if you want—”

“No, _fuck no_. That kid will eat all the beef, Jongdae.” He protests and Jongdae laughs. Somewhere, an innocent Sehun is sneezing while doing his assignment at Baekhyun’s slander.

\---

Weekend comes and Baekhyun gets the apartment all to himself as Chanyeol flees away to his music studio to practice and Jongdae is whisked out of town with Junmyeon to accompany Junmyeon at a family event. To his benefit, Baekhyun managed to finish his revision on his first chapter and has sent it to both Yifan and Professor Park for approval and now awaits for the email that’ll spare him 10 years of his life and can get working on chapter two.

The group chat has been a little quiet lately, with everyone being busy with university or work. Zitao and Sehun are working on a presentation they have to deliver on Monday morning and won’t be free until they finish. Kyungsoo, like him, is busy doing his final thesis and promised to catch lunch with Baekhyun later on once he’s done with his own chapter revisions. Jongin is also cooped up in his dance studio in preparation for the art exhibit. He thinks of Minseok and Yixing, but the two lovebirds are probably tired from their week at work and wants the weekend all to themselves. And Luhan, well, given the eight hour time difference between Seoul and London, he’s sure his hyung is still snoozing in bed.

It’s not like Baekhyun has anything to do. He does since Jongdae had left him a list of chores to do but those are things he would rather not do and Junmyeon’s “cleaning will help you de-stress” theory is absolute bullshit because Baekhyun one time had a panic attack in front of the washing machine when the machine began to shake and Jongdae had laughed at him and said that that’s what tumble dry is. A term Baekhyun will never ever use.

So he tries his luck with Luhan.

[11:01] Byun Baekhyun: hyung  
[11:01] Byun Baekhyun: are you awake

Baekhyun is surprised the message was read pretty quickly because it must be around 3AM in London currently.

[11:02] Lu Han: unfortunately  
[11:03] Byun Baekhyun: do you want to skype? im bored  
[11:03] Lu Han: baekhyunnie its 3am  
[11:03] Lu Han: hold on

He sees the notification from Luhan’s Skype contact turn green and folds his leg underneath him. The incoming call tone followed soon afterwards and Baekhyun quickly fixes his hair and fixes the angle of his webcam. From Luhan’s side, it was dimly lit with the laptop screen harshly contouring Luhan’s facial features. Luhan quickly puts in earphones while Baekhyun turns up his laptop speakers.

“Hey brat.” Luhan greets him and Baekhyun says hi back. “Why are you all alone? Jongdae and Chanyeol aren’t home?

“No, Jongdae is out of town with Junmyeon hyung and Chanyeol has practice, hyung.” Baekhyun answers, fixing himself up more as he sees himself in his webcam. “So I have the apartment all to myself.”

“Nice. If we were dating, this would be a great time to have webcam sex.” The older smirks and Baekhyun groans in disgust.

“Disgusting, hyung. You’re turning 25 next month, stop hitting on innocent boys like me.” He protests. “Also, I’m telling Sehun.”

“You’re hardly innocent, Baekhyunnie.” Luhan teases the younger and Baekhyun rolls his eyes.

“Sehun said you’re coming back to Korea,” Baekhyun asks after he’s stopped Luhan from making any more further sleazy remarks. “When? What time?”

“In three weeks,” Luhan answers, checking the calendar on his phone. “I’ll send you guys a copy of my ticket in the group chat.”

“Great,” Says Baekhyun, looking down to play with his nail. He notes to himself that he has to cut it so it won’t be hard to type. “Who’s picking you up from the airport?”

“You miss me that much, Baekhyunnie?” The older teases again and Baekhyun is so close to disconnecting the call.

“3AM isn’t treating your brain nicely, hyung. I’ll leave you now to jerk off to the image of your newly legal boyfriend, you pervert.”

“Please don’t make me dating Sehun sound so ugly, Baekhyunnie.” He pouts and Luhan went from looking like an almost 25 year old make to a 6 year old. “You know I’m teasing you.”

“I know,” Baekhyun mutters. “I miss you a lot, hyung. University is weird without you.”

“Being here in London all alone without you brats is also weird,” Luhan leans his head on the stack of pillows behind him. “I’m awake when you guys are asleep and asleep when you guys are awake.”

“Three more weeks, hyung.” Baekhyun rests his chin on his hands. His phone vibrates next to him and it’s Kyungsoo, sending a message that he’ll be done in two hours if Baekhyun still wants to go for lunch.

“I should probably sleep now though, it’s closing in on 4AM and I have a video conference in five hours.” Luhan groans and falls back onto his pillows, exposing the column of his pale neck to the camera.

“Old habits never really go away, do they hyung?” The younger laughs because back when Luhan was still an undergraduate student, he also stayed up late whenever there was a big conference in the morning that he’s nervous for.

“Truly.” He shortly answers. “I guess I’ll see you all in three weeks then.”

“Yes,” Baekhyun agrees. “Three weeks. Goodnight, hyung. Brings lots of souvenirs from London.”

“Yeah, yeah—Bye, Baekhyunnie.” His hyung waves cutely and disconnects the call. Baekhyun shuts down his laptop and starts to get ready to meet Kyungsoo for lunch since he feels like he hasn’t showered properly in days and with no Jongdae and Chanyeol at home, he can use the shower as long as he wants and take up all of the hot water without being complained at once he’s out of the bathroom.


	3. Chapter 3

“Hyung, don’t mess up my grill—” Sehun swats the chopsticks out of Baekhyun’s hands and it lands into the bowl of ssamjang. They’re cramped in a rather small booth, with Sehun and Zitao’s long legs taking up way too much space, fighting over who gets to handle the grill and Kyungsoo only pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs as he oversees the growing disaster. 

“Sehun, you only care about the galbi, put the other meat on there.” Baekhyun fights back, trying to grab the barbecue tongs out of the younger’s hand. Zitao is rather quiet, busy munching on the various side dishes in his own little corner unbothered. 

“Why did I ask you two to come to lunch with me?” Kyungsoo sighs. As close as Sehun and Baekhyun’s friendship is, Sehun is a whiny brat and Baekhyun likes to tease, so the combination of these two together always ends up in a borderline public nuisance warning. He’s pretty sure they’re loud enough that people outside of the restaurant can hear them. 

“Cause you’re lonely and have no friends aside of us,” Baekhyun answers, and that earns him a smack to the back of the head by the younger. 

“I have friends outside of you annoying lot,” Kyungsoo berates. “They’re all just busy.”

“Yeah, yeah.” The older mocks, wiggling the barbecue tongs he’d successfully snatched out of Sehun’s hands in front of Kyungsoo’s face. “Say whatever you want; at the end of the day, you’d rather be with us ‘annoying lot’ and have the time of your life.” 

“You love us, Kyungsoo hyung.” says Sehun, and Zitao nods with a mouth full of pajeori.

To an extent, Kyungsoo thinks it’s is pretty true. His life would’ve been pretty boring if he hadn’t ran into Baekhyun back in their first year of high school in the music room, and when Baekhyun introduced Jongdae to him, the three grew to be quite good friends. The following year, Kyungsoo met Sehun, and weekend sleepovers at Baekhyun’s house turned from something Kyungsoo was forced to go to, to something he always looked forward to. Zitao and Kyungsoo later met in university, when the younger mistook Kyungsoo as a fellow freshman and had excitedly clung onto Kyungsoo and talked to him in his cheery accented Korean. 

“I don’t call waking up at 3AM to a drunk you on my doorstep cause you’re too drunk to drive home ‘the time of my life’”, Kyungsoo shakes his head and hides the growing smirk on his face. 

“You enjoyed that night,” Baekhyun replies and Kyungsoo gives Baekhyun a light and playful shove. 

“Stop talking and grill the meat properly before it gets charred.” Baekhyun gives an affirmative nod and concentrates on grilling again, while Sehun whines about how Baekhyun is doing a terrible job and how he’ll complain if it tastes awful. 

“I’m going to the toilet,” Zitao announces before  smacking Sehun to get out of the way. The two youngins exchange a few curses and insults before the Chinese boy is out of their private booth, and Sehun momentarily enjoys the wide amount of space he has. 

Kyungsoo asks Baekhyun about how his final thesis is going, and Sehun exposes Baekhyun’s story about how the older cried at the university’s fountain when he thought he lost his USB that had all of his research materials. Baekhyun was a second away from clamping the barbecue tongs on Sehun’s lip to shut the younger up when the waitress comes to check if they’re having any difficulties with the grill, and he refrains in case they get thrown out of the restaurant and possibly banned for life. 

“I talked to Luhan hyung before coming here,” Baekhyun finally says while flipping over a piece of meat. “He’s coming back to Korea soon.” 

“Really?” Kyungsoo looks up at Baekhyun, munching on the plastic of the chopsticks. “Aren’t you excited?” He asks Sehun, who has his eyes locked on the galbi. 

“I am,” Sehun says. “But in like, three weeks. In time for the art exhibition.” 

“Speaking of the art exhibit,” Baekhyun interrupts. “Chanyeol wants us all to come to his final recital practice—oh the meat is done.” 

“When will that be?” Kyungsoo reaches out to take a piece of meat off the grill. Sehun was also quick to fend off his portion onto his own plate and Baekhyun smacks the younger’s hands for being too greedy. 

“In two weeks,” 

“What piece is he playing for the recital?”

“A  _ really _ grand one. One even I can’t play.” Baekhyun says in between munches. “Liszt’s La Campanella.”

“Your hands would be too small to play that, Baek.” the younger replies. “I’ve heard and seen people who play that piece.” 

“Are you underestimating my piano skills?” He pouts, and sure, he’s a little rusty since he hasn’t played the piano seriously upon entering university, and given his current major, he doesn’t really feel the need to because he wants to be an author and not a pianist. His mother had forced him to take piano lessons when he was younger, and it merely became a small hobby and the only thing aside from writing that Baekhyun felt he did exceptionally well at.

“Of course not, the first time we met you were playing Chopin’s Ballade no. 1 for god’s sake,” Kyungsoo scoffs. “I’m just saying, with Chanyeol’s hands, it’ll be easier for him to reach the fifteenth and sixteenth intervals compared to you.” 

“I can play that if I wanted to,” Baekhyun sulks and turns to Kyungsoo.

“Of course you can, but you’re an English Literature student, Baekhyun.” The younger says plainly. “You can write tear-jerking stories.” 

“You know what else is tear jerking?” Sehun interrupts his hyungs. “How awful Baekhyun hyung is at barbecuing this. Look, hyung, it’s still uncooked.” 

Zitao returns just as Baekhyun reaches over the table to swat Sehun with the barbecue tongs, but he misses by a millimetre. 

“Glad it doesn’t seem like I missed anything,” The Chinese boy says and shoos Sehun so he can return back to his original seat. Baekhyun lets Kyungsoo take over on barbecuing all of the undercooked and raw meat so they can finally get to eating. No talking ensued after all of the meat was cooked, as the four boys were all too busy eating to their heart’s content. 

—-

Sehun is the designated driver when Baekhyun is too full to function and Kyungsoo forgets his driver’s license back in his apartment. 

“How did you, of all people, forget to bring your driver’s license?” Baekhyun groans, slouching against the backseat, as his stomach aches a little from eating too much. A bump in the road only worsens his nausea. “Sehun, drive fucking slower.” 

“This is as slow as I can drive without causing a traffic jam, hyung.” Sehun argues. Zitao is in the passenger seat beside him, busy picking filters for his latest Instagram update. “I don’t want to be pulled over by the police cause I drove too slow. That’s embarrassing.” 

“Your entire existence is embarrassing, Sehun.” The older snarks, and if his life wasn’t in Sehun’s hands right now he would’ve smacked him. Kyungsoo is silent from how full he feels and is on the brink of dozing off to sleep. 

“Why are you so rude to me, hyung?” The younger continues to run his mouth, looking over his shoulder to pout at Baekhyun. “Don’t you love me?”

He groans and shifts to a more comfortable position, the metal of the seatbelt digging into the side of his thighs. “No, I love my car, so focus on the damn road.” 

—-

Baekhyun had sort of half expected for this to happen, yet he’s still amazingly thrown off by it. And it wasn’t like he hasn’t been hoping for an opportunity like this ever. 

During their drive back from lunch, Minseok had messaged the group chat saying that they should catch a movie together since the new horror movie that Minseok and Sehun had been raving about all month is finally in theatres. Sehun, who at the time was driving, begged Baekhyun and Kyungsoo with puppy eyes and his signature cute whines that both of his hyungs could never say no to. 

Though he didn’t expect for Minseok to have a blonde, handsome man in tow with him when the four of them reached the theatre lobby. Upon seeing him, Zitao suddenly bursts into fluent Mandarin and charged at said handsome blonde man, hugging him like a koala hung off a branch. 

“Yifan ge!” The Chinese boy says, the older male standing awkwardly while trying to hug Zitao back. Sehun gives the car keys to Baekhyun and joins Minseok to stand in line to buy their tickets, and Kyungsoo excuses himself to use the restroom, probably about to throw up from the absolute horror of a u-turn that Sehun did in order to get to the theatre on time. 

“Hi, Zitao” Yifan answers back in Chinese, and he catches Baekhyun walking towards where he’s standing and fends Zitao off of him. For someone who just ten minutes ago was complaining about how scary the horror movie will be and demanded Sehun to stay the night at his place after the movie as compensation, Zitao looked far too happy. 

“Ge, this is Baekhyun, he’s from the same faculty as you!” He introduces and Baekhyun sort of feels a little embarrassed, not knowing what to do or what to say so he just stands there frozen like a rock and tries to avoid looking directly into Yifan’s eyes as Zitao excitedly talks to Yifan. 

“I know,” The older smiles. “I’m his teaching assistant, Zitao. Remember?” 

“Right!” Zitao gasps. He asks how and why Yifan is here and Yifan says that he and Minseok had planned to meet up today to watch a movie, since today is the weekend and they finally managed to catch a break from work. Zitao was quickly called over by Sehun, who has no shame on whether or not it was a public place, asking the boy to help him order drinks and popcorn for the six of them. “Be right back!”

“Okay,” Baekhyun squeaks, now left alone standing there with Yifan. Yifan looked nice, as always, and Baekhyun wonders if there’s ever a moment that Yifan doesn’t look like he just stepped off a photoshoot with perfectly styled hair and nice outfits.  _ Probably when he wakes up in the morning— _ but Baekhyun blushes as he thinks about Yifan with messy bed hair, his voice heavy with sleep. God, if Jongdae was here, he’d laugh so hard at his poor, embarrassed soul. Since when had he become this awkward? Jongdae used to call him out on that, and now he too wonders when it happened, because Byun Baekhyun, English Literature major and someone who totally doesn’t cry over romantic dramas aired on daytime TV, does not get embarrassing flowery crushes. Especially not on an attractive 6’2 tall Chinese man.

“Are you excited about the movie?” Yifan finally asks him, breaking the pregnant silence from growing on even longer. Baekhyun thinks it’s cute the way Yifan combs his fingers through his pushed back hair. His eyes are fixed at the trailer of the horror movie on the screen in the theatre’s lobby. “That looks scary.”

“If you’re scared hyung, you can hold my hand.” He jokes and joins in on watching the trailer, trying to hide the internal panic that’s storming right now inside of his head.  _ Fuck, did he really just say that? Out loud? Wasn’t that just supposed to be an inner thought? Inner voice? Whatever.  _ He’s praying Yifan didn’t hear that awful joke he just said and was too indulged in the trailer to notice but he snorts, covering his mouth and nose with his large hands. 

“It’s going to be you holding my hand, Baekhyun. I’m not scared of anything.” The older laughs and Baekhyun thinks it was a nice save. 

“We’ll see about that, hyung.” He smirks and Yifan gives him a look that says ‘oh, I take your challenge’. Baekhyun wants to melt into the dusty carpet underneath him. Kyungsoo returns while rubbing at his stomach and either 1) he threw up all of his lunch because of Sehun’s borderline law-breaking driving; or 2) took a nice big shit. Judging by the content smile plastered all over his face, it was the latter.

“That was nice,” Kyungsoo says, still rubbing at his stomach as he stops right beside Baekhyun. “I forgot how nice the toilets were here.” 

“You and me both.” Baekhyun answers. “By the way, Kyungsoo, this Yifan. Yifan hyung, this is Kyungsoo.”

“You’re so tall,” Was the first thing that spills out of Kyungsoo’s mouth as he looks up at the older male. Baekhyun chuckles a little too hard and Yifan does too, taking Kyungsoo’s hand in his for an official get-to-know handshake. Kyungsoo and Baekhyun were only a centimetre apart in height, but Baekhyun had always boasted about how he was taller than both Jongdae and Kyungsoo back when they were in high school, and that he’s finally the tallest in his friendship group. That soon changed after Sehun hit puberty and basically towered over Baekhyun, blindsiding the older since he had grown nearly a foot taller in just one summer. Then came Chanyeol in university, just when Baekhyun thought there was no one taller than Sehun. 

Minseok comes over and hands out the tickets to everyone with Sehun and Zitao in tow holding everyone’s share of popcorn and drinks. Baekhyun teases Zitao, asking if the younger can even watch a horror movie let alone eat while watching one. Kyungsoo herds them over towards the theatre entrance before a fight could break out. 

—-

Twenty minutes into the movie, Baekhyun finds himself more distracted than ever. The movie is pretty tame so far, only showing the starting scene of a group of friends getting ready to set off on a big camping trip at a secluded area in the middle of a forest. Yifan is seated beside him, leaning a little to the left so his shoulder is pressing against Baekhyun’s, and never in his life did he expect this kind of seating arrangement. 

He’s not going to lie and say he didn’t pray to God that the odds were going to be in his favour and that he’d sit next to Yifan during the movie. 

To his right is Sehun, who has Zitao clinging to him, and he warns the older to not claw so hard into his skin or else Sehun would look like he just got beaten up. Minseok is sitting beside Kyungsoo, both of them eating the popcorn and watching the movie diligently. 

“Zitao, fuck, asshole,” He hears Sehun’s whispered curse;the Chinese boy must’ve gripped Sehun’s arm a little too hard. 

“Sehun stop fucking pushing me away—oh my god—I’m so scared—”

“Asshole, stop moving or else the popcorn bucket is going to spill—”

“No, no, no, no—” Baekhyun laughs in his head at the two youngin’s whispered fight beside them until the woman seated in front of them turns around to tell the two boys to be quiet and Baekhyun audibly snorts. He quickly covers his mouth to hide it.

“What’s so funny?” Yifan whispers to him, hot breath fanning against the shell of his ears and Baekhyun’s legs grow weak. Nothing could possibly be funny since the scene that’s on the screen right now is of weird things happening at the campsite during the night. 

“Sehun and Zitao were fighting,” He whispers back to Yifan and the older lets out a silent ‘o’ and turns his attention back to the movie. 

Baekhyun tries to avert his eyes away from the screen because he isn’t that strong towards horror movies, unlike Sehun and Minseok who watch it with ease and don’t have to worry if they’re going to be haunted in the middle of the night when they’re sleeping. Yifan shifts in his seat and his shoulder accidentally bumps into Baekhyun, making the younger jolt and almost spill his popcorn all over his lap.

“I’m sorry,” Yifan apologizes, calming Baekhyun down by giving his arm a reassuring squeeze. He didn’t mean to startle Baekhyun like that. Baekhyun says it’s fine and tries to get back to watching the movie. 

The movie moves onto its climax, the scariest and most horrific part of the movie, and Baekhyun swears he’s aged about ten years from this single part.Zitao is sobbing into Sehun’s sleeve while the younger looks enthusiastic, sitting on the edge of his seat. Baekhyun sometimes wonders if Sehun is human. Minseok was leaning back into his seat, watching the horror movie like he’s watching a sappy soap opera and Kyungsoo sits silently and partially hides himself behind his scarf whenever the ghost appears. Beside him, Yifan was watching through the gap of his fingers, popcorn spilled everywhere because a few minutes ago, Minseok’s feet accidentally nudged into Yifan’s calf and the older almost had a heart attack. 

“Oh my god—oh my god Sehun—” Zitao cries out and Sehun ignores Zitao’s pleas and cries for the movie to end faster. Baekhyun subtly tries to lean into Yifan more, maybe if he’s lucky enough, he can hide his face in Yifan’s shoulder. He hopes Yifan doesn’t mind him leaning against him, even though Baekhyun feels like he’s taking advantage of the whole situation since Yifan is literally scared half to death (so is he, but he won’t admit it just yet). 

Baekhyun slowly lowers his head to rest on Yifan’s shoulder, hoping the older doesn’t shrug him off. He’s ignoring all of the horrific scenes up on the screen and Yifan must’ve had a sixth sense or whatever, because it wasn’t until a second later that a large hand smacks Baekhyun’s face, hard, like swatting a mosquito, and if his nose wasn’t broken before, it is now. Baekhyun doubles over to cup his face into his hand, trying to ease the pain away. 

“Oh  _ fuck _ ,” Yifan curses, finally realizing what he had done and pulls Baekhyun back up and wraps an arm around the younger’s shoulder. “I thought the ghost came out and touched me for real, I panicked, I’m so sorry.” The older apologizes trying to hug Baekhyun to say he’s sorry and make sure the younger is fine.  

Baekhyun doesn’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse that he got smacked in the face by Yifan, but with the way the older is showering him with apologies and  holding him close to his body, Baekhyun wouldn’t mind being smacked in the face again. (His masochist tendencies are showing up, as Jongdae would say)

The rest of the movie is spent with Zitao’s cries growing louder and Yifan holding Baekhyun in his arms, constantly apologizing and asking if Baekhyun’s nose was alright. 

—-

Luckily his nose was fine by the time the movie was over and the lights came on. Baekhyun checked out his face on his camera and saw that everything was fine. That reassured Yifan, and Baekhyun saw the relief visibly wash over Yifan’s face. Minseok bursts out laughing at a teary faced Zitao who had streaks running down his face and Sehun’s arm looking like it was mauled by a lion. 

—-

_ I’m sorry for smacking your nose! I’m so sorry again! I didn’t mean to. _ Yifan texts him right after they’ve parted ways from the theatre. 

_ Don’t worry about it hyung. I’m alright, my nose is strong^^. _ He smiles as he types his reply back to Yifan and presses send.

“Don’t text while driving.” Kyungsoo scolds, and Baekhyun mutters a defeated ‘fine’ and puts his phone away. 

—-

“I can’t believe you went and had barbecue without me,” Chanyeol whines the moment Baekhyun walks through the front door.

“How did you even know?” The older asks without turning around, placing his car keys into the bowl by the front door. “Weren’t you going to be at the studio all day?”

“I got tired of practicing—don’t try to change the subject!” Baekhyun lets out a grunt and joins the younger who’s sprawled out all over the couch. “I saw Zitao’s Instagram update!”

“It was a last minute idea.” 

“Also, tell me what happened in the theatre cause—” Chanyeol is cut off by a cushion that’s thrown straight into his face by Baekhyun. Sehun, that fucking brat must’ve been texting Chanyeol again when they were in the car and Baekhyun wants to throw the brat’s Playstation console into the middle of the Han River. “What the fuck?”

" _ Nothing _ . That’s what happened in the theatre. Nothing happened.” Baekhyun asserts, pulling away from the couch and walking as quickly as possible into the kitchen to avoid Chanyeol’s further inquiries. His face feels like it’s on fire and by the way Chanyeol is smirking so smugly at him, he definitely knows something. 

“Really?” The younger lifts an eyebrow. “Then why are you avoiding me?”

“I’m thirsty, Chanyeol.”

“For your teaching assistant?” Baekhyun mentally notes to himself next time to publicly post that picture of Sehun with the brown stain on his white pants on his social media feed. He thinks of two things; one is that if he gives Chanyeol the satisfaction of not replying to that crude and lack-of-tact statement, he’d feel as if Chanyeol has won over him and he’d be defeated. And two, if he does answer, that means he’ll be verifying whatever bullshit information Sehun has been feeding Chanyeol on a silver platter. So he opts for option number one and continues to just walk to the fridge to get himself a nice glass of juice. 

Just when Baekhyun finally thinks he has Chanyeol off his back, Chanyeol crowds him till his back is aching from how hard the knobs of the stove are digging into his skin. “I’m not budging till you tell me.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Baekhyun half yells, taken aback from Chanyeol’s sudden intrusion and protects his apple juice from spilling onto the floor. “Have you forgotten I do hapkido? I can roundhouse kick your neck.”

“As if your foot can even reach my neck—” A punch lands on Chanyeol’s stomach and he doubles over onto the floor and Baekhyun flees away yet again. “Baek, fuck—that was a low blow!”

“You’re a low blow,” Baekhyun yells from the living room where he’s hiding from Chanyeol but he screams the moment Chanyeol charges out of the kitchen and literally fucking jumps on Baekhyun, knocking the older over onto the carpet. Chanyeol sometimes forget that he’s literally twice the size of Baekhyun, and tackling him should be pretty easy, except for the fact that Baekhyun is feisty and his foot is quick to find the spot that he had punched Chanyeol earlier and kicked. Hard. 

If Chanyeol thinks that being kicked by Luhan and his stupid soccer technique is painful, this is ten times more painful. 

“Chanyeol, fucking move.” Baekhyun grunts, his knees hurting from banging it onto the floor when Chanyeol took him down with him. 

“Fine, if you won’t tell me, I’m calling Jongdae,” The younger says with a pout after beating each other black and blue, but before Chanyeol could even get to his feet, Baekhyun reaches out his hand and yanks on Chanyeol’s pants, causing the younger to stumble back onto the floor again. Jongdae is the last person Baekhyun wants to know cause as much as he loves Jongdae and all that bestfriends bullshit they have between them, if he wanted personal torture, he would’ve told him himself. And Chanyeol knows Baekhyun will eventually cave in and tell Jongdae cause Jongdae is an intrusive motherfucker who has no sense of personal boundaries when it comes to Baekhyun. Calling Jongdae was Chanyeol’s way of saying “I’m pulling out the big guns now” on him. 

“Don’t you fucking dare call Jongdae,” He hisses, but Chanyeol crawls to grab his phone off of the coffee table. Baekhyun’s reflexes are lightning fast now though, out of  sheer of fear of Jongdae’s torments. Baekhyun is quick to kick Chanyeol over so the younger falls face first on the carpet, and he takes this as an opportunity to grab Chanyeol’s phone before he regains his balance from falling over. 

He’s successful after all, and he watches Chanyeol’s face turn into frustration when he waves his phone in the air. 

“Give me my phone back, Baek.” Chanyeol grits his teeth and tries to grab at Baekhyun’s ankle so the older will fall back, but he risks his phone screen cracking from the fall. Baekhyun pokes his tongue out childishly and blows a raspberry at the younger. 

“I’ll give it back if you promise not to call Jongdae.” 

“Hell no—” and that was that, after Chanyeol disagreed and tried to yank Baekhyun’s pants down in order to retrieve it, his phone was the one going into Baekhyun’s pants. His underwear, to be exact. 

“I will get in there,” threatens Chanyeol. After all, he’s lived with Baekhyun for the last four years and fishing his phone out of Baekhyun’s underwear is the least of his problems. His problem right now is how much his phone will smell like Baekhyun’s dick afterwards. 

Jongdae returns, unfortunately, to Chanyeol pinning Baekhyun down on the floor. Baekhyun’s pants are around his knees and Chanyeol is abrasively trying to rip Baekhyun’s underwear off of him while Baekhyun is grabbing at his crotch and screaming bloody murder. It wasn’t exactly a common occurrence, but somehow it was something to be expected of them, according to Jongdae as he walks past like it’s no big deal and pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s tired from the trip out of town with Junmyeon and he has the worst headache imaginable, probably due to dehydration. Jongdae ignores the two of them trying to tattle-tale on each other to him, and he feels like a single mother with two pre-teen sons as he holds himself back from scolding the two because the living room looks like a plane crash site.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how to tell i love byun baekhyun so much: torture him with embarrassment in every chapter


	4. Chapter 4

Baekhyun wakes up Monday morning startled and bangs his head onto the wall behind him as he’s greeted by Sehun’s face hovering above him.

“Sehun, what the fuck—” Baekhyun pulls the covers up to his chin and screams. He hears Jongdae’s manic laughter come from outside and knows that that bastard must’ve let Sehun into his room. “What are you doing here?”

“Hyung,” the younger says, face full of seriousness and his seriousness is seriously suffocating Baekhyun. “I think I’m having a midlife crisis.” He climbs into the space beside Baekhyun and lies there, face facing up towards the ceiling in a dead and lifeless stare. 

“What do you mean midlife crisis, Sehun? You’re not even fucking 21 yet.” The older curses and just tries to get back to sleep. Sehun does this, ever since he turned 20 last year, he’s been baffled by the number 2 instead of 1 that’s now permanently taken place in front of his age and feels as if he’s 80 and complains as if he’s lived through two world wars. Minseok, the one friend who has actually turned 25 this year, opted to ignore Sehun whenever he’s in his dramatic I’m-getting-so-old-why-has-time-flied-so-much moods. Luhan is following suit next month and so is Yifan, in November, right, Baekhyun now knows Yifan’s birthday. 

“I’m serious” Sehun says, rolling to his side to glare at Baekhyun. “Today, a white hair fell on the floor when I was brushing my hair. I’m already greying, hyung.” 

Baekhyun pinches the bridge of his nose and smacks Sehun’s arm, the younger yelps and Baekhyun is pissed he disrupted his sleep since he didn’t have any morning classes today and could’ve slept in till at least 10AM. 

“Your entire fucking head is platinum blonde, Sehun, if your hair falls off red  _ that’s _ when you should be concerned.” He rushes out of bed and nearly stumbles over a little bit from how weak and unbalanced his footing is. Sehun doesn’t move aside from rubbing at his arm where Baekhyun had smacked him hard. Now he’s wide awake and has 6 hours to kill before his afternoon class.

He exits his room to Jongdae sitting at the dining table, laptop in front of him and coffee in his hand. Chanyeol had left earlier today for practice and Jongdae is just finishing up drafting an email. 

“So how is Sehun’s midlife crisis?” Jongdae, the asshole, smirks behind his coffee mug. Baekhyun only grumbles and drags his feet to the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee to wake himself up. Sehun mumbles about how hard Baekhyun had punched him and Jongdae only coos telling the younger that Baekhyun is grumpy in the mornings. 

“Midlife crisis my ass,” Baekhyun curses from behind the kitchen counter. “—all that chemical is finally doing damage to your brain—” Stopping himself to pour the coffee into his mug and points the teaspoon threateningly at Jongdae. “And you, you asshole, you knew about this so you sent him to me. Fuck you.”

“He needs advice from his best hyung,” Jongdae coos, ruffling up Sehun’s hair. Sehun has the most bratty pout on his lips and Baekhyun swears his mouth will fall off if he pouts even harder. “Isn’t that right, Sehunnie?”

“Fuck you, Kim Jongdae.”

“No thanks, Byun.” Jongdae laughs again and goes back to his laptop. Baekhyun rejoins them at the dining table with a bowl of cereal and coffee in hand. The clock reads 8.45AM and he mentally wonders himself why the fuck Sehun is even here. Didn’t he say he has a presentation to present with Zitao today? What time does this kid’s class even start? 

“Don’t you have a presentation today?” Baekhyun finally asks to kill his own curiosity. “Are you neglecting Zitao?”

“Yes and no,” Sehun answers. “It’s at 11AM and I was bored at my apartment. Jongin already left for practice.” 

“And you thought it was necessary to go and bother me in my own apartment?” The older has a headache and has aged at least 40 years since he woke up this morning because of Sehun. 

“You don’t seem to mind, hyung—” Sehun answers so innocently and Baekhyun  _ did _ say that his apartment is always open for Sehun ever since Sehun’s parents practically threw their trust on him when Sehun begged them to let him apply at Baekhyun’s university and his mother calls Baekhyun more than she calls Sehun to check up on her own son.

“God,” Baekhyun groans. Neither of them say anything afterwards. Sehun has taken the liberty to also make his own breakfast (a.k.a emptying half of Baekhyun and Jongdae’s fridge content) and Jongdae leaves at exactly 9AM to meet his supervising lecturer. 

—-

If it hadn’t been for that one time at the movie theatre that Yifan had smacked Baekhyun’s face with his hand (an incident both Sehun and Jongdae won’t let Baekhyun live down), Baekhyun is 100% sure that he wouldn’t be in a casual texting relationship with Yifan. Sure he might be breaking the rules a little bit because Baekhyun is pretty sure that relationships with the teaching assistant, let alone Professor Park’s teaching assistant, is highly frowned upon in the faculty but it’s not a relationship anyway. It’s more of Baekhyun whining to Jongdae over how he should reply to Yifan’s text messages and how long he should take to reply so he doesn’t look desperate in the older’s eyes. 

“Dude, just fucking reply already.” Chanyeol smacks Baekhyun’s arm beside him. “You’re ruining the atmosphere.” 

“Yes, _please_ , you’re making us suffocate.” Kyungsoo says dryly from across the table, to which it only adds salt to a wounded Baekhyun who rests his head on the table and groans out in frustration. 

“I don’t get why you can’t just reply back immediately, hyung.” Sehun now joins the party of harassing Baekhyun. “Yifan hyung has already started hitting on you. Like literally, hit you.” Zitao beside him sniggers and the two youngins high five each other at the successful blow on Baekhyun. Kyungsoo almost chokes on his rice curry.

“Shut up, Sehun.” Baekhyun snaps and kicks the younger’s shin hard, causing him to drop his sandwich onto his lap and Sehun launches himself to grab Baekhyun’s phone which only starts a catfight between the two. Sehun’s big fat mouth has caused him to receive constant harassment from everyone in the friend group, including gentle and quiet Yixing who turns out can deliver pretty savage jabs and is always backed up by his boyfriend, Minseok, who also says quite spicy remarks from time to time. 

Chanyeol separates the two before they get kicked out of the courtyard cafe. 

“Look Baekhyun,” says Chanyeol after managing to snatch Baekhyun’s phone back from Sehun and returning it. “Just reply.” 

“What did he even say?” Kyungsoo finally asks the big question while not taking his eyes off of his plate. Everyone at the table seems to leans into closer to hear whatever response Baekhyun is about to say. The older turns noticeably red on the cheeks and his nimble fingers play at the hem of his black cable knit sweater. He hates this—for some reason he finds himself become extra nervous when everyone is actually quiet and gives their full attention to him cause he’s so used to just butting in and speaking over someone (a bad habit that Baekhyun needs to get rid of, says Junmyeon). 

He hesitates a little and continues to look down at his lap. He can sense the raised eyebrows all pointed towards him. 

“We don’t have all day, Baekhyun—”

“Okay, fine.” Baekhyun gulps and swallows down whatever last shred of pride that he had left. “He asked me if I had class today and I don’t know how to reply without ending the conversation and making him lose interest.”

Sehun rolls his eyes, as expected and picks off the pieces of lettuce out of his lap. Zitao gives him a little smirk as if he knows something that Baekhyun doesn’t and is potentially life ruining. Maybe Yifan has said something to Zitao about him, but he’s not about to get conceited and have his hopes up. This leaves to just Chanyeol and Kyungsoo who look at each other and back at Baekhyun again.

“My oh my,” Kyungsoo sing songs, putting down his spoon and fork neatly by the plate and leans forward to rest his chin onto the palm of his hand. “Our Baekhyunnie is in love.” 

“No, I’m not!” snaps Baekhyun again. He’s pretty sure that his cheeks are as red as a tomato right now and Chanyeol doesn’t do any justice either.

“Baekhyun-ah,” he says in a teasing tone. “You’re so cute when you’re in love.” 

“I told you—I’m not!” 

“Yifan and Baekhyun sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” Chanyeol sings and is joined by Sehun who’s enjoying seeing his hyung being the object of bullying for once instead of him (since he’s the youngest and the baby of the friendship group). “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Baekhyun with a baby carriage.”

Zitao howls with laughter and that surely got the entire cafe staring at their table with questioning and annoyed stares. 

“You guys—what are you, 12?” Baekhyun whispers in anger, trying to avoid showing his face at the staff so they won’t reject him from ordering his coffee in the future. 

“Yeah, on a scale of one to ten!” Chanyeol answers and the ‘sick ass burn’ or whatever hip lingo Zitao and Sehun speak nowadays, sends them all in a fit of laughter (except Baekhyun who’s fuming) and high fives galore, even Kyungsoo was stifling back his laughter. 

“I’m leaving,” Baekhyun says, getting up onto his feet and shoves his phone into his pockets. “I’m not gonna sit here and let you guys slander me.” 

“Sit down Drama Queen,” Chanyeol tugs on the hem of Baekhyun’s sweater for the older to sit back down. “I know you don’t have anymore classes today and you’re just gonna go home and coop yourself in that room of yours and wallow in self-pity.”

“No, I’m not going to do that.” Baekhyun quickly defends himself even though he knows that Chanyeol is dead on correct and that is exactly what he’s going to do the moment he reaches the apartment. “I have a thesis to finish, remember.” 

“Okay, no more teasing.” Kyungsoo clears his throat. “Just reply to him, Baek.”

“Yifan ge is pretty talkative once you’ve piqued his interest,” Zitao says while adjusting his seating. “This is actually the first time I’ve seen him text someone back so quickly.” 

“Since when do you know that word in Korean?” Sehun interrupts Zitao and Zitao gives him a death stare.

“My Korean is getting better and better okay!” the Chinese boy says back. “Soon, I’ll be able to understand all your lame jokes to the maximum degree.” 

Zitao’s remark somehow gave Baekhyun a little hope on how Yifan doesn’t actually find him as boring and annoying or if their relationship and necessity to contact each other is just on the basis and need of final thesis consultations and reviews. Nonetheless, the atmosphere goes back to loud and playful around the table with Chanyeol laughing at Sehun and Zitao bickering instead of separating the two youngins away and Kyungsoo rolling his eyes till it might actually fall out from his eye socket at every dumb statement Chanyeol says. Baekhyun replies back to Yifan quickly and joins back into the conversation with his friends. 

—-

“Hi,” Baekhyun says as he knocks on the door and peeps his head through the door frame. “Can I come in?”

“Hey!” Yifan jolts up from his office chair and quickly fixes himself up. “Come right in and set up.” 

Baekhyun makes his way to Yifan’s desk and promptly places all of his documents out for his consultation and review session with Yifan. They’ve made a deal to have two sessions a week, one was for consultations if Baekhyun has any questions or changes that he proposes to do to his thesis or just explaining his progress in general and one is for review to which Yifan gives his advice and amendments to Baekhyun’s draft thesis. Today is a consultation session and Baekhyun is looking forward to impressing Yifan with his current progress and proposal.

“So you’re working on chapter two now, is that correct Baekhyun?” Yifan says, his voice has a tinge of sleep in it and judging from how messy the back of his hair is, he must’ve been dozing off in his office chair. “That would be research question number two on his impact on Sir Thomas North?”

“Yes, I’d like to tell you about my progress on the chapter.” Baekhyun answers, leaning forward onto his elbows on the table. He starts by explaining to Yifan all of the articles that he’s read for his research and how he came to a conclusion of this certain paragraph in his essay. Yifan asks him a few questions and he feels proud having come prepared and been able to answer Yifan’s questions perfectly and not making a fool out of himself. Baekhyun notices the way Yifan is trying his best to stay awake for Baekhyun and listen attentively to his progress report. 

“I’d like to ask something though, Yifan hyung”

“What is it?” Yifan yawns and Baekhyun doesn’t miss how adorable the way Yifan’s nose scrunches. 

“Would it be necessary for me to also include Amyot’s Translations of Plutarch?” He asks while gazing at Yifan. Yifan looks pretty out of it as he takes a few seconds to process Baekhyun’s question and stares blankly at the younger with his mouth still agape. “Hyung,”

“Right, Translations.” The older slaps himself gently on his cheek to keep himself from falling asleep in front of Baekhyun. “I personally think that it’s an impact even though Amyot only did translations for Plutarch’s work, Lives, and it did become a great hit back in 1579. But it’s up to you, Baekhyun.”

“Does he have other works that are as big as Lives or what is it just Lives?”

Yifan mumbles and thinks to himself for a while. Baekhyun is unsure if it’s just Yifan’s thinking mode or if it’s his falling-back-asleep mode cause both look pretty similar to him. 

“I think he has  _ Les Ouvres Morales et Meshes de Plutarque _ .” The older answers and Baekhyun is amazed that Yifan can even remember such a long French title while in a half asleep state. “I’m sorry Baekhyun, I’m just so out of it today.”

“You tired?” He asks, pulling the laptop close to him. “You should go back home and get some sleep, hyung. We can end early and consult another day.” 

Yifan quickly looks at his watch and up at the clock on his office wall. “Did you bring your car today?”

Baekhyun is startled by the sudden question. “No, I walked to campus today—why?”

“Good, cause I wanted to ask you to get some coffee with me.” Yifan says and gets out of his chair. He reaches his car keys off of the table and chucks his phone into his pocket and grabs his briefcase from under the desk. “I know a place nearby, we can continue there once I’ve got some caffeine in me.” 

“But hyung, it’s late—” 

“Come on,” Yifan laughs. “It’s only 6.30pm, Baekhyun. Let’s go.” 

Baekhyun obliges while his heart is racing as he trails behind Yifan to the parking lot. This is the second time that he’s rode in Yifan’s black Mercedes. It’s definitely much more comfortable than what he commutes in on a daily basis. Plus, there’s something sexy about the way Yifan looks when he drives and Baekhyun is glad that Yifan hasn’t called out on how much he’s been staring at him or else he would open the door and duck and roll out of the car. 

He sits there nervously with his bag clutched tight to his chest, catching sneaky glances at Yifan and he notices Yifan’s small glances at him, laughing and telling Baekhyun to ease up and act like he’s a friend rather than a teaching assistant. The radio is turned off and Yifan rolls the window down, letting the night Spring air of Seoul seep into the car. 

It’s a twenty minute drive from the campus to the coffee place that Yifan had mentioned and the first thing Baekhyun notices is the live band that’s playing a soft, slow jazz tune and how it fits beautifully with the dim lights and vintage setting of the cafe. 

They take a seat by a big glass window and Yifan excuses himself to go order their drinks for them, after Baekhyun had put up an argument on how he can pay for his own coffee but Yifan insisted. Baekhyun is still in awe of how breathtaking the scenery of the shop is and how Yifan even stumbled upon a place like this since it is in a secluded part of town. 

The older returns with a smile on his face as he takes his seat across of Baekhyun and shrugs his coat off of his shoulders. 

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Yifan asks while running his fingers through his hair. “I thought you might like this place.”

“Yeah, it is.” Baekhyun answers softly. Yifan’s eyes are focused on the live band and if Baekhyun thinks that the setting was already beautiful and perfect enough, with Yifan added, it was even more perfect. It’s beautiful the way Yifan looks bathed under the warm yellow lighting of the cafe and it feels like a first date with shy smiles and the whole process of getting to know the other person from zero.

The waitress comes with their drinks and Baekhyun is a little surprised when the waitress places a cup of black coffee onto the table in front of him. 

“How’d you know I like my coffee black, hyung?” Baekhyun asks after saying thank you to the waitress for bringing their drinks.

“I might’ve remembered what you said and what you were drinking when I sat with you at the cafeteria last week,” answers Yifan shyly. “Did I get it wrong?”

“No, no.” Baekhyun quickly assures Yifan. “I just didn’t think you’d remember such a small thing.” Now Baekhyun is the one who feels shy and has his face feeling like it’s burning with flames because  _ holy hell _ , Yifan remembered something about him and it was a small useless thing on how Baekhyun likes to have his coffee. “Th-thanks though, hyung.” 

“You’re welcome, Baekhyun.” Yifan smiles and gets a little foam on the top of his lip from his latte. Baekhyun teases him for having such a weak tolerance for coffee and from then on it’s just playful jabs and teasing, getting to know each other. Baekhyun’s thesis revision had been completely forgotten.

—-

“Tell me why lately you haven’t been looking like you want to choke me to death, Byun Baekhyun.” Jongdae asks from the dining table. Chanyeol who’s also sitting on the chair beside Jongdae looks up at a Baekhyun who’s busy pouring himself a bowl of cereal. 

“Why? Do you want me to look like I have a pole up my ass all the time?” He snarks back at the younger. 

“You usually do—”

“Shut it, Chanyeol.”

“Don’t be mean to Chanyeol,” defends Jongdae. “We’re just concerned.” 

“On what? Me being happy?” He retaliates, slamming the cap of the milk bottle on a little too hard and shoving it away in the fridge. “What’s so wrong with me being happy?”

“You, my friend, are the Devil reincarnated so you being happy only means two things: you finally dunked Sehun into Han River or there’s something related to that hot TA of yours that you’re hiding from us.” Jongdae holds up two of his fingers to prove his point. “And I’d like to think it’s the latter cause I genuinely love Sehun.”

“I love Sehun genuinely too, you know.” Baekhyun rolls his eyes at his best-friend. “Besides, didn’t you think that it could be about my thesis?”

“Quote by Byun Baekhyun three weeks ago, “I will never be happy about my thesis until I’m done with this stupid fucking thing”” Chanyeol perks up and Baekhyun lets out a ‘tch’ before joining the two at the dining table. 

Baekhyun swears that these two will never let him live his life peacefully without any form of interrogation at everything he does. 

“Two days ago, you didn’t take the car with you, but you came home late.” Jongdae recalls. “And it was a Wednesday so you had a consultation with that TA of yours.” 

“Yeah, and?” The older raises an eyebrow in confusion, failing to see Jongdae’s point. 

“And we’re wondering if you went on a date with him after consultation?” Chanyeol asks so innocently and Baekhyun chokes on a spoonful of cereal and spits it all over the table. Jongdae rolls his eyes and grabs the tissue box from the middle of the table and hands it over to a dying Baekhyun. He quickly gets up to to fetch Baekhyun a glass of water while Baekhyun tries to stop himself from choking.

“Is that a yes or a no, Byun?” Jongdae asks again now while handing the glass of water over to Baekhyun. “Judging by your reaction, I’m taking it as a yes and I’m offended as your best friend of 17 years that you didn’t tell me.” 

“It wasn’t a date,” Baekhyun coughs out the last bit of cereal stuck in his throat. “And fuck you, Jongdae, you were already dating Junmyeon hyung for two weeks before I found out.” 

“See this is why as roommates, we all have to be open to each other.” Chanyeol says out loud and Baekhyun resists the urge to dunk his bowl of cereal all over Chanyeol’s head. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey hii!! sorry i havent updated in long ive been busy ;; but yes here is chapter 4!! hope u enjoy


	5. Chapter 5

Luhan returns to Korea on a Wednesday morning and Baekhyun, as expected, is dragged all the way out to Incheon International Airport with Sehun while still being half asleep. When the younger had told him that he’ll be picking Luhan up on the day of his arrival, he had said “okay” and continued to type away on his thesis—until he realized that Sehun has no car and the pout on his lip and the puppy eyes directed towards him was to be expected.  

“I am home!” Luhan yells out from the international arrivals terminal. Clearly the 10 hour flight from London to Seoul didn’t bother him at all despite his incessant fear of flying. Baekhyun can only think that Luhan must’ve drank his weight’s worth of the complimentary wine on the plane to forget all his fears.

“Hyung!” Sehun runs to meet the older and they join up in a warm tight hug, Luhan being lifted off the ground a little from how tall Sehun is and they nearly topple over if it wasn’t for Luhan’s ginormous suitcase stopping them. 

Baekhyun grins a little seeing Sehun, who was pouting and sleepy earlier in the car, finally reunite with said boyfriend who he has been moaning on about for the last few months about how much he misses him.

“I missed you,” he hears Sehun say while pressing a kiss to Luhan’s temple and taking the suitcase handle into his hand. They walk over to join Baekhyun who’s waiting by the exit, leaning over the railing like a wet piece of clothing hung under the sun.

“You know, you really shouldn’t say you’re home when your home is all the way over in Beijing, China, hyung.” Baekhyun says, stretching up and feeling his back crack. 

“Home is wherever you guys are,” the older says and pulls Baekhyun in a suffocating hug.

“Cheesy.” He replies. “Is this new? Your light brown hair?” 

“Yeah!” Luhan takes off his beanie to ruffle his hair. “Is it good? Sehun was the one who recommended me this colour.” 

“It’s a new look definitely. It’s good.” Baekhyun answers, giving Luhan’s hair a ruffle himself before having his hand smacked away by the older. Sehun ends up lugging Luhan’s heavy suitcase all the way back to the carpark and Baekhyun wonders how Luhan even managed to lug it from his apartment in London and all around Heathrow airport. Baekhyun sees this as punishment to Sehun for dragging him out here so early in the morning. 

After Sehun’s done loading Luhan’s suitcase into the trunk he climbs into the backseat behind the passenger seat where Luhan is all buckled in and nestled. He leans forward to wrap his arm around Luhan and the seat, burying his nose into the older’s hair. They’re comfortable in each other’s embrace and silence as Baekhyun reverses out of the parking space and makes way back to Seoul.

—-

It’s only 9.15AM when Baekhyun reaches his apartment. Jongdae is at the dining table with his cup of coffee and laptop open in front of him, all dressed up and ready to leave for university and Chanyeol seems to have already left for the studio. 

“How’s Luhan hyung?” Jongdae asks as he sees Baekhyun waltz in and drape his scarf on the back of one of the dining chairs. “Ah, that’s where my scarf went!” He protests with a pout.

“Sorry, sorry. I grabbed the first scarf I saw this morning,” Baekhyun apologizes. “Luhan hyung is fine, I just dropped him off at Sehun’s.” 

“Nice, let’s arrange lunch or something with him,” Jongdae replies and takes another sip out of his coffee. “By the way, I need the car.”

Without much thought Baekhyun throws the keys at him. Between the three of them, they have two cars to share and it’s always his car that’s being shared between him and Jongdae simply because Chanyeol drives a ridiculously big SUV that fits his big and lanky limbs but makes Baekhyun and Jongdae have to sit on a stack of books in order to be able to see the road properly. So Baekhyun’s Subaru becomes the family car and he trusts Jongdae to not crash his car into a wall. 

_ Good morning, _ a text from Yifan pops up on his homescreen and Jongdae sniggers at how fast Baekhyun snatches his phone off the table to get out of Jongdae’s sight. They’ve been on a casual texting basis as Sehun and Zitao would say and he tries to not sound like a 15 year old middle school girl when he replies back to Yifan’s good morning text. 

“Cute,” says Jongdae behind his coffee mug full of sarcasm and mockery. “You’re on par with that middle schooler who live across the hall.” Baekhyun burns up from his best-friend’s comment and tells him to shut up and pokes his tongue out instead of lunging at him and smacking him. A true representative image of 22 year old mature adults. 

Wednesdays also means that it’s his thesis counselling session with Yifan. He’s well on the way now onto his third chapter and it also marks Yifan’s last two weeks as his substitute lecturer as Professor Park will be making his return after his leave. To which, he feels a little sad about this but tries to push those thoughts aside. Two more chapters to do then approval, defense and evaluation of his thesis, and then off Baekhyun is for graduation. 

—-

As expected there was a lunch invite that had been spread in the group chat by Luhan. Baekhyun accepts immediately knowing that he’s free in the afternoon and he looks forward to just sitting down with his hyung and catching up on life in general. Minseok and Yixing both accept the invite, so does Jongdae and Junmyeon, and he realizes how he’ll be surrounded by couples. Sehun will be there, obviously, shyly hiding the fact that he’s skipping class for it but he’s got someone to cover for his attendance signature and so does Zitao. Only Kyungsoo, Chanyeol and Jongin are absent but Kyungsoo says if he can be let out of his meeting as soon as possible, he would join them immediately. 

He honestly just can’t wait to see Zitao and Luhan bicker and fight in Chinese again as Yixing tries to separate the two by giving nice words. But even though those two almost always bicker when together, Zitao loves Luhan and vice versa. Luhan had been the one who took Zitao under his wing when the younger had first arrived in Korea. 

He thinks about inviting Yifan to join them, knowing that Yifan is friends with both Minseok and Zitao and that he has already gotten acquainted with Sehun during their impromptu horror movie get together. So he tries his luck and messages asking if it’s alright if he brings a plus one. 

**[11:03AM] Byun Baekhyun** : hey  
**[11:03AM] Byun Baekhyun** : can i like, bring a plus one?  
**[11:05AM] Oh Sehun** : omg who  
**[11:05AM] Lu Han** : I DIDN’T KNOW YOU WERE DATING SOMEONE?!

“Dating” is not even close to what he and Yifan are. 

**[11:07AM] Byun Baekhyun** : we arent.. dating..  
**[11:08AM] Byun Baekhyun** : look if i cant then thats ookay  
**[11:10AM] Lu Han** : oh my god no! The more the merrier :D  
**[11:11AM] Kim Jongdae** : :3  
**[11:12AM] Byun Baekhyun** : quit it kim  
**[11:13AM] Kim Minseok** : Which Kim are you referring to there’s 4 Kims in this group chat

Now that he’s gotten the approval from his friends, his real feat is trying to get Yifan to agree to come out for lunch with him. He mulls over on how he’ll even ask the older. He doesn’t want to sound like he’s trying too hard, yet he also doesn’t want to sound too casual. He wants to still assert to the older that this lunch is more than just a casual slash friendly get together. Jongdae would’ve threw a house slipper at him now if he knew he’s being like this. 

He types and deletes and re-types his text to Yifan about 20 times before actually sending it to him and proceeds to throw his phone onto the other end of the couch so he doesn’t see Yifan’s reply. He plants his face onto the cushion in shame, embarrassment, what if Yifan can’t come? Or rejects his offer? Why does he like to make himself feel like throwing himself into ongoing traffic?

Thankfully Yifan says yes and that saves his entire soul and ego. 

_ Sure, just tell me the time and I’ll come pick you up, Baek. _ His cheeks grow red at Yifan’s text. It’s not that he’s nervous about riding in Yifan’s car but the fact that Yifan is picking him up, picking him up at  _ his _ apartment, makes him feel like he’s going out on an actual date with Yifan. An actual planned date. He replies to Yifan’s text before he lets his thoughts run wild at how happy he is. 

But his worries wash over him again as he thinks about what he’ll wear. By means he isn’t trying to look nice for his friends because fuck his friends, they’re people who has seen Baekhyun completely naked before and not for the right reasons (barging in while Baekhyun is showering, barging in while Baekhyun is changing, and basically lacking common decency to fucking knock on the door). Baekhyun hopes that Yifan will be someone who sees him naked for the right reasons. Sex reasons. But that is for another day to discuss.

Baekhyun’s fashion sense ranges from a burlap sack to a middle schooler’s mismatched pink shirt with green jeans. He’s surprised he hasn’t picked up a good fashion sense from the people he hangs around with. Sehun is practically always looking like a model off a runway with his simplistic yet stylish outfits, Jongdae, Kyungsoo and Chanyeol dress the way college students should dress with slim fit jeans and dress shirts while Minseok and Junmyeon dress like working class men, fancy tailored suits and even when they’re out of their work attire they dress fashionable. Now with the addition of Yifan, who is equally or even more stylish than Sehun, he may have to re-think his entire wardrobe choice. 

Sehun had always said that you can never go wrong with black clothing. So he tries to dig out every single piece of black clothing he owns out of his wardrobe and lay it all out on his bed. He eyes the black turtleneck and wonders if it’ll go well with jeans and his cream coat. 

Sehun’s phone picks up on the first ring and he’s greeted with a breathless “What do you want?” and Baekhyun cringes at whatever he and Luhan might be doing. 

“I have a fashion crisis,” Baekhyun says into the phone. “I need your advice.” 

There’s an audible gasp that comes from the other end and rustling and muffled ‘what are you doing’ from Luhan’s counterpart.

“Okay, I’m ready for your problem hyung.” Sehun replies in a dead serious voice. Trust Sehun to take immediate interest in something like this and ignored Baekhyun completely when Baekhyun was asking him on how to fix a leaking faucet last week. 

“Would a black turtleneck, grey ripped jeans and cream coat match?” he describes. There’s a few moments of silence from Sehun, presumably he’s trying to imagine the combination in his head. 

“Do you have a black coat?” Sehun finally asks. 

“I think Jongdae has one, why?” 

“Cause it’ll look good with a black coat.” says Sehun again. “Why are you caring so much about what you wear, hyung?—oh my god, is the plus one—”

“Do not end that sentence.” threatens Baekhyun. His face burns cause fuck, Sehun saw through him completely.

“I knew it!” Sehun cackles and Baekhyun scolds before the younger blows a raspberry to the speaker and hangs up. He texts Yifan the time and his apartment address (in case Yifan forgets) before hopping into the shower. 

—-

Yifan is right on time when picking Baekhyun up. Baekhyun has his face pressed against Jongdae’s bedroom window as he sees Yifan’s black Mercedes pull up in front of his building to park. He watches Yifan climb out of his car, his hair newly dyed dark brown and is pushed up and Baekhyun’s stomach drops at how much sexier Yifan looks with dark hair, not like he didn’t look great as a blonde either. A phone call from Yifan comes through to tell him that Yifan is already outside his apartment. Baekhyun smiles a little and pockets his phone, wallet and keys before heading downstairs. 

“Hey you,” Baekhyun greets Yifan. Yifan smiles when he meets Baekhyun’s gaze and opens the car door for him.  _ And they say chivalry is dead _ , Baekhyun thinks as he thanks Yifan and sits himself in the passenger seat. 

Yifan gets in behind the wheel and buckles himself in before putting the gear back in drive. 

“You look nice today,” he says shyly at Baekhyun, flashing a small awkward smile at the younger and Baekhyun mentally pats himself on the back (and Sehun too) for his excellent choice in outfit today. “I mean—not that you don’t always look nice—b-but you get what I mean, right?”

“I do, hyung. Thank you.” Baekhyun answers, carelessly squeezing Yifan’s arm a little and he feels the older tense under his touch. “And you dyed your hair too hyung!”

“Ah this?” says Yifan, looking at himself in the rearview mirror. “I just got tired of touching up my roots, I might as well dye it back dark again. Does it look weird?”

“No, not at all,” Baekhyun shakes his head. “I think you look handsome with dark hair.” 

Yifan gives him a thank you with another shy smile and squeezes Baekhyun’s hand, his much larger hand perfectly encompassing Baekhyun’s much smaller hands. Baekhyun honestly feels his heart skipping a beat whenever Yifan smiles. He likes it when Yifan gives him his shy little smiles or big gummy smiles when he’s laughed too much with Baekhyun from an unceremoniously lame joke during their counselling sessions. 

—-

They arrive at the restaurant thirty minutes later after a long journey of fighting Seoul traffic. It’s another Korean barbecue restaurant and Baekhyun knows it’s by Luhan’s request since the older is almost always ranting about how much he misses Korean beef while he was in London. 

Yifan, being the gentleman he is, is quick to open Baekhyun’s door for him and Baekhyun honestly feels like he’s on a date with Yifan. The older locks the car behind them and Baekhyun wants to cling onto Yifan’s arm so bad in the middle of this cold weather, so he tries to inch his fingers on the sleeve of Yifan’s coat to hold on to it, but Yifan seems to think otherwise and wrap his arm around Baekhyun’s shoulder to pull him close to his side. 

“Will your friends seriously be okay with me joining?” He says softly to Baekhyun ears, hot breath fanning just a little against his shell. Baekhyun nods frantically and tells him that it’ll be fine since Yifan knows Minseok and Zitao. 

The waitress guides them to the private room that has been booked prior for them. He spots all seven pairs of shoes in front of the room and the loud clatter from inside already indicate that they’re all in there. 

All eyes head to Baekhyun and Yifan when Baekhyun slides the door open and greets them. Their betraying assess have already started ordering and eating without even asking Baekhyun and Sehun looks more in love with the beef than he does with Luhan right now.

“Baekhyun hyung you’re here!” Sehun greets with his mouth full of grilled beef. Luhan who’s also stuffed himself with beef waves hello at the two while eyes significantly widening at the sight of Yifan.

“Yifan?” Luhan swallows and coughs as he calls out to Yifan who takes a seat in between Baekhyun and Zitao. “Is that you Yifan?”

Yifan’s eyes also widened at Luhan and Baekhyun has no idea what the hell is going on between those two as everyone falls silent, opting to looking back and forth from Yifan and Luhan. 

“Luhan?” He finally answers, shrugging his coat off of his shoulders. “You’re back in Korea already?”

“Oh my god,” Luhan chokes on air and Sehun hands his boyfriend a glass of water before he seriously dies in the middle of the restaurant. “It’s been so long? Oh my god. Two years is it?”

“Yeah, it has,” Yifan answers at Luhan. Luhan gets up and walks over to give Yifan a big welcoming hug and Baekhyun has an odd feeling in his stomach that he can’t quite name. He’s not essentially jealous, no, since Luhan is Sehun’s boyfriend and has been dating for more than a year now. But he can’t help but think from the awkwardness in Yifan’s gesture as he stiffens when Luhan wraps his arms around him that these two have shared a history together. 

Baekhyun and Yifan aren’t that close yet that they’ve exchanged each other’s love stories of the past. Since Baekhyun has fooled around with more men than he’s ever dated, he’s sort of embarrassed to actually share that with Yifan if the time ever came. 

Whatever history they had shared together, all Baekhyun knows is that Luhan is completely cool about it as he embraces Yifan like a friend again. And so does Yifan too, he thinks. 

“I didn’t know you were dating Baekhyun though!” Luhan says again as he pulls away from Yifan. “Nabbed yourself a cutie pie right there.” And winks at Baekhyun who can only sit there with this mixed emotion of jealousy, embarrassment and self-hatred. 

Yifan looks at Baekhyun and back down to Luhan, a tinge of pink colouring his cheekbones. “We aren’t d-dating.” 

“Oh,” Luhan falters, letting go of Yifan completely. Thankfully, before Luhan can utter another word again, the waitress pops in with their order of more pork belly which sends Luhan back into celebration mode and completely forget about the awkward encounter between him and Yifan just a few seconds prior. 

Jongdae who’s quietly sat next to Baekhyun caresses the side of Baekhyun’s face, tucking a brown strand of hair behind Baekhyun’s ear. Jongdae is always quick to notice if Baekhyun suddenly falls silent, but Jongdae also knows that it’s useless to coax Baekhyun to talk about it and he knows that Baekhyun will always go to him first to talk about it. So he only gives Baekhyun’s thigh a reassuring squeeze before turning back to Junmyeon who’s chattering away with business talk with Minseok. 

Yifan catches Jongdae’s gesture at Baekhyun too but decides to ignore it as Luhan pours him a glass of soju. 

“To Luhan’s return to Korea,” Minseok raises his glass and everyone follows the oldest in raising their glass. They all toast to Luhan finally being back in the motherland (not really, his motherland is all the way in China) after being away for so long and it’s honestly been so long since everyone has been gathered all together again.

Baekhyun’s lost count on how many plates of beef he’s eaten, too lost in the celebration fever. Sehun and Zitao as usual fight over the grill with Minseok, Jongdae and Junmyeon overlooking the disaster and making sure nothing burns. Yixing has scooted over to sit with Yifan and Luhan, Baekhyun overhears the three converse in Chinese and a part of him dies whenever he sees Luhan casually squeeze Yifan’s arm whenever they laugh over a joke. 

He feels out of place, even when he’s surrounded by all of his friends. Kyungsoo arrived a few minutes earlier after having finished his meeting with his academic supervisor and Luhan scoops the younger in his arms. 

Luhan and Yifan look like a couple. More so than Luhan and Sehun do and Yifan and Baekhyun do, even though Luhan is dating Sehun and Sehun looks like he’s about to marry the next plate of grilled beef he sees. And it aches him, the way they’re both so casual with each other, Yifan draping his arm over Luhan’s shoulders as they both lean in to listen to Yixing speak, Luhan lightly punching at Yifan’s side whenever Yifan teases the older and overall they just look great together. 

“Careful you’re about to break that chopstick into two, Baekhyun.” Junmyeon teases him, placing a hand on the younger’s back soothingly. “Do you want another piece of meat?” He offers, pointing at the freshly new serving that’s being grilled by Minseok.

“Thanks hyung but I’ll take a break from eating,” answers Baekhyun. “I’m one piece of meat away from unbuttoning my jeans.” 

“You’re weak, I’m already there!” Jongdae humors him and lifts his shirt up to reveal a slightly protruding belly. “I’m carrying a meat baby.” 

Junmyeon laughs and gives Jongdae’s stomach a soft poke with his finger which causes Baekhyun to smile. He’s glad Jongdae is happy with Junmyeon and can be his silly and cheery self with him. He can’t imagine a more perfect person for Jongdae. 

“Are you full already?” Yifan asks him as he plops beside Baekhyun, shoulder pressing against him. He looks over to Luhan who’s now chattering away with Kyungsoo and Yixing. 

“Yeah, I ate so much,” Baekhyun whines and leans his head against Yifan’s shoulder. “I’m so close to unbuttoning my jeans.” 

“You and me both,” Yifan chuckles. Baekhyun feels like he can fall asleep, resting on Yifan’s bony shoulder. His head lulls and his eyelids are starting to feel a little heavy. Damn, the stupid carbs and beef. Yifan moves his hand so it’s resting on top of Baekhyun’s hand and Baekhyun’s skin burns at the contact. 

“Hey,” Baekhyun perks again. Yifan gives a hum indicating that he acknowledges Baekhyun’s call. “I didn’t know you and Luhan hyung were friends.” He’s lying, he knows they’re friends but Baekhyun wants to confirm a thought in his head that’s been driving him mad. 

“Yeah,” Yifan says breathily and a little tense. “Friends in the same year, both from China, y’know?”

“I see,” he hums. Jongdae eavesdrop their conversation a little but minds his own business, trying to stop Sehun and Zitao from drowning each other in the hotpot because Zitao got the last piece of meat. Luhan orders another round of soju for all of them and it started from a nice lunch session to a full on celebration filled with nine half buzzed adults. 

—-

“I used to date him.” is what Yifan’s says when they’ve arrived in front of Baekhyun’s apartment. They’ve decided to cancel today’s counselling session since it’s well past 5pm and Yifan gathers that Baekhyun must be tired from the gathering. Baekhyun doesn’t know what to reply with when Yifan says that and why he would suddenly say it hours after. Baekhyun can only mutter a simple ‘I see’ at the older as his thoughts from earlier on today was confirmed and his heart shambles. 

“See you tomorrow?” Yifan asks as Baekhyun is about to turn around to head into the building.

“Yeah, text me when you get home alright?” He smiles and Yifan nods at him. Baekhyun waves Yifan off and watches his car drive away onto the street. 

—-

Forty minutes later, Yifan’s text arrive but Baekhyun ignores it and busies himself by joining Jongdae in the living room to watch some old re-runs of their favourite TV show. Jongdae notices Baekhyun ignoring his phone and lets him curl up to his side onto the couch, his fingers immediately running through Baekhyun’s soft brown locks. 

His phone is buzzing quite a bit, probably from the group chat on how everyone is sending in pictures from today and saying how much fun they had being fools around each other. 

“I don’t think he’s over him yet.” Baekhyun sniffles into the material of Jongdae’s shirt. “I’m really stupid, aren’t I?” Jongdae doesn’t say anything back and only continues to pet Baekhyun’s hair as he cries into Jongdae’s shirt. 

Chanyeol comes back home and Jongdae tells the younger to be quiet as he spots the older curled up to Jongdae’s side emitting audible sniffing and sobs. Chanyeol only ruffles Baekhyun’s hair as sympathy before he disappears into his bedroom to get changed.  

That night Chanyeol cooks them up some french fries and chicken wings to accompany their shitty horror movie marathon session, Baekhyun’s heart aching a little remembering the last time he watched a horror movie was with Yifan next to him and how close Yifan had held him that day. But he’s not about to become a spoil sport and also bring down Chanyeol and Jongdae’s moods with him. So he lets all of his worries of today go even though Jongdae tells him that if he wants to sit down and cry or talk about it, it’s all perfectly okay with him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally!a chapter update,, ive been so hectic with university work but today i finally managed to sit down and bust a chapter out. i hope u all enjoy this!!shitty update of a chapter. luv u
> 
> p.s. to the person who commented in the early chapters abt how u feel that theres somethn between yifan and luhan: YOU'RE CORRECT!

**Author's Note:**

> i love krisbaek!!


End file.
